This morning I found myself contemplating fear.
Yesterday I found myself talking about a film called Das Leben der Anderen – see the film here CLICK – and the time of my life during the socialistic regime in Hungary. I heard myself ‘blame’ the Russians for overtaking our land and our lives. I found myself enraged again about the atrocities we had to endure.
Then it suddenly occurred to me that it is not only a far, far away past that upsets me but none of it actually exists any more.
Why am I so upset then?
I grew up at a time of terror. We were threatened for our lives at every turn. You had to watch out not to become suspect of any wrong-doing, or you may have been reported to the ‘Stasi’. Every perceived wrong-doing could be punished by imprisonment or death.
I learnt to live with dread. I became neurotic but daring. My response to fear was to challenge those threatening and punishing me. Until one day, I decided that I had had enough and fled.
Except that I took the now innate dread with me. Unknowing, I now held the threatening shadows inside myself. They never ceased to scare me, day and night. So, I continued running trying to flee the shadows.
I daringly conquered all the obstacles and challenges of my life. But I failed to notice that I lacked courage; the courage to face the one ‘enemy’ that generates all the anxiety that has been lurking in my veins.
I have tried it all. I tried to fix it and forgive it. Neither could I let go of the memory of the terror I once lived. It has become part of the vivid tapestry of who I am.
What I must do, however, is face it with courage that stems from my loving embrace. I want to find the compassion within myself that holds me while I look into the eyes of the terror and say ‘I love you, regardless!’
