There is a song by the Early November called "A Mountain Range In My Living Room" and I want to quote it here because it perfectly captures what I will be talking about.
It loses something when it's not sung but the lyrics are:
"It's never been harder to fall
there's nothing to grab
and that's all I want to hold on to."
The post I made prior to this one touched upon this idea. You see all throughout my life I have never been able to make any mistakes without being penalized for them. Maybe your life was the same, if it was then you will know what I am talking about here. This is why I am so afraid of what I'm doing right now in my life. Taking a step backwards or retreating. Whatever you call it, every time that I have made mistakes things have got worse. The really nasty part about this is I'm one of those people that really can't learn unless I make mistakes. The world makes little room for people like this.
There was a kids show one a while ago. It was called "The Magic School Bus." In it Ms. Frizzle and her class go on amazing magical learning adventures. Traveling back in time to dinosaurs, or shrinking down and going inside a classmate to learn about anatomy. In every episode the children were presented with hands on learning opportunities and each time they mess things up. Then Ms. Frizzle would gallantly arrive, not to rescue, but to encourage the children to "Take chances. Make mistakes." Because it was all part of the learning process. With the mistakes made and the aide of a magical bus the children could go back and fix things, or keep trying things until they got it right. At that point they had actually learned something.
Well I really needed to learn the same way, sadly there was no magic bus for me. For me it was always learn it, get tested, get failed. End of story. As Early November puts it "It's never been harder to fall." Because there is nothing to catch when you do, and that's all I have. The fear that everyone is just waiting for me to fail. Like I'm the weak one in the herd and the wolves are circling. Now this is probably just paranoia on my part but I still can't shake the feeling. That being said the retreat is going well. At least so far. Every day I make impressive headway on my to do lists. And that at least gives me something to feel good about.
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3 comments:
Congratulations on making progress and getting things done :)
I think it's pretty difficult to learn things without making mistakes. But I'm hugely afraid of failure, which has stopped me doing lots of things, particularly learning to drive. I'm still afraid every lesson of making a mistake, but unfortunately sometimes it's just a matter of forcing yourself to do it, and eventually it gets easier learning to deal with the mistakes. I know how hard it can be though.
there's this book, THE NOW HABIT. I just started reading it. Phenomenal stuff in there. I'm starting to think I'm not bipolar or depressed, I'm procrastinating. It is all about this fear of failure that you are talking about. We all have it to some degree. I highly recommend this book, especially for you. I got it used @ amazon for like four dollars. Worth every penny.
Hang in there brother! There's light. You'll find it.
ps- this is alice. :)
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