It's All In Your Head... And You Know It

It’s  11:02 of the clock. We are finding ourselves in Frankfurt, surprisingly enough. The northwestern sky I spot from this here location is undecided whether to rain or shine.

I know the feeling.

Croissant or cheese straw for breakfast?

Coffee or plain old water?

Such were the early morning hurdles that needed overcoming. They were not necessarily super high but it is early days. I am sure there’s more to come. I can feel it.

And I ask myself: hurdles and their height (or obstacles if you will) – are they of the It’s all in your head-category? Take sports for example, the hesitant approach more often than not lets you falter altogether in front of whatever is to be jumped over and across. Courage! (or simply: get a move on!) – that was the heart-warming advice my gym teacher used to give.

Why anyone on earth would want to hurtle towards an obstacle ye high and what is more to try and leap to their possible death in order to get across it is beyond me. Well, perhaps death is a little too much but sprained ankles and twisted knees ain’t no laughing matter either.

Anyway, suffice it to say that for the last two years of school I was exempt from any jumping activities. Hurdles in particular. Plus my lack of enthusiasm for sports simply did not allow for gravity defiance and other such nonsense. Just because Jesus walked on water does not mean that one has to attempt the impossible – could be construed as being presumptuous, even blasphemous.

However, the main goal was achieved – no bloody hurdles for me.

But back to the point – hesitation, the dilly-dallying, the wavering when faced with the sheer unconquerable, the unscalable, the seemingly un-doable will make any obstacle into Mount Etna or something. Enter the doubts and boom! you are in for visualisations of doom, of failure and all around loser-dom. And - need I say - you fail, fear becomes truth, nay reality, you baulk (and stand IN FRONT OF the bloody hurdle). 

What if – crazy thought alert – we switched off that overly busy mind of ours, remain in the moment, no past, no future. Very Zen. VERY difficult!

Yet also truly the only way, after all the past cannot be changed, the future is unforeseeable.

All we have is that fleeting moment which we have got to make the best of, live it to the fullest to the best of our abilities.  

Ah, the sheer simplicity of it all! Were it not for our fear, our ego, our pride.

We cling to times gone by, moments lost, minutes past, long to get back to a time when all was golden. Oh how we wish we could… if only.

Similarly, we paint our future, sometimes rosy, sometimes black, we predict and guess and basically worry too much.

Yet our remaining in the Here and Now is complicated, even spoiled by said fears, ego, and pride – that being our true weakness.

And another truth universally acknowledged: it is only the moment which counts, and which can be truly ours.

Surprisingly, even I do understand the concept of that.

Truly living this way, however, is an entirely different matter. It’s hard work, so if one is not  prepared to let go of at least some of those comforts we seems to amass in the course of our lives, then please do not bother at all. We would need to take off our life jackets made of complacency, laziness, apathy, and indifference, however reluctantly. Ironically, we know full well that they don’t keep us afloat at all but rather tend to drag us down into abysses of inactivity, and eventually unhappiness. Yet still we keep them on for fear of the unknown.

We exchange our sobriety for a bag full of worries and fears. Think about that!

And that right there seems to be the root of all evil, the Ur-obstacle as it were.

We are wired to be cautious, to be apprehensive.

We are wired to be frightened of things, to fear the unknown especially – that ensured survival in times when we inhabited caves and our surroundings were less than hospitable. To this day we carry this fear. The caves may have gone, so have predators that may have been dangerous to us in the olden cave dwelling days, yet the unknown has us scared out of our wits as it were.

Now, we are not really aware of our fears – whatever they may be – when we’re fine and all is roses. But woe to those experiencing problems, difficulties, facing – dare I say it – challenges. Oh, then boom! They are there. En masse. Everywhere. All the time. And they don’t let go. They hold you good and tight. Being paralysed by fear - that’s where that comes from.

What is worse though, is that our fears seem to directly have our ear. They lead us to believe that in the past everything was just so much better and that we all should go back to that but since we can’t the status quo is the only and best way for us to be. Change really only ever gets us further away from that and even further from that golden past were all was cosy and we were safe. And if that past was not that then all the more reason to remain where you are, right, ‘cause you don’t want to go back, it was awful back then.

So: Status Quo!

Our past, our life/live experience is our yardstick, - for better or worse.

People don’t say “you learn from experience” for nothing.

You learn from your mistakes.

A burnt child dreads the fire.

Need I go on?

Could it not also be true that experience can make you blind? And deaf?

I believe so. Namely, when you are so caught up in that one life lesson that you believe it to be the only valid one, the only true experience – again for better or for worse.  

So it may be good to do things differently from time to time, to NOT panic, to NOT accept the same old same old because it’s always been done like this and don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.  

Oh, make no mistake, it can be quite a heady thing going all out and giving it your all and then - oh wonder - making it across that hurdle, accepting the challenge and winning It makes you feel ecstatic and immensely proud.

On the other hand, it can bloody hurt when you fail.

The only thing that indicates however is that fear had the upper hand once more, that you gave in to that. It means that you need to spend a little more time getting to that „empty space“ in your head, the zone or whatever. It means that you should practice to visit the furtur less often. Instead, stay here, do not be scared. Be inspired.

My own personal hurdle I took bravely and with grace: two cheese straws and a coffee, please.