April Fool’s Day, 2013

“Fear is the only obstacle to our hearts, and in knowing who we truly are.”

This was the status post of one of my friends on Facebook. I asked her what this meant. This was her reply to me:

“I only know what my heart desires. I’ve learned that fear is an illusion. It has kept me from myself. It has kept me from what I want. I’ve given it up. Only love is real. Only love will complete us.”

It made me stop and think.

Our fears sabotage our ability to have meaningful and truly intimate relationships. It undermines our clarity, honesty and openness. It robs us of our capacity to be fully present in each moment. When we don’t want to deal with something, we tune them out. We think that by tuning-out the calling, we could avoid the pain of being connected. But in the end, our fears and our act of avoidance deliver us into the very pain, confusion, and unhappiness from which we are fleeing.

Truth knocks on the door of our awareness, attempting to reach out to us, to wake us up, to invite us out of the places in which we’ve hidden, to reveal new pathways and new directions. We know it is “truth” knocking, but we choose not to answer the door.

We hide, hoping either unconsciously or consciously that if we ignore whatever is trying to get our attention for long enough, it will go away. We ignore the question to avoid the responsibility of finding the answers.

Sometimes, we find the curiosity to see what’s out there, but we don’t let whatever it is to go in. We close the door again and go about with our lives pretending that truth isn’t standing right there at our doorstep. We get so convinced with our habitual tuning-out of the sound of the knocking on the door, that we get to the point when we truly believed it was never there at all.

As a child, I believed in the Genie-in-a- Bottle concept. I remember how I used to always ask my friends:

“If the Genie-in-a-Bottle is right here with us, what would be the one thing you would ask for?”

Kids usually gave answers that they wanted at that particular moment. Answers were usually the material, tangible kind —

“I want a new bag.”

“ I want a Hello Kitty pencil case.”

Our requests on the Genie-in-a-Bottle change as we grow older. As teenagers, when we were asked the same question, we found ourselves saying:

“I want my crush to have a crush on me.”
“I want bigger boobs.”
“I want a good high-paying job/career.”

And now that we have come to this stage in our lives, we are almost afraid of answering the question:

“If the Genie-in-a-Bottle is right here with us, what would be the one thing you would ask for?”

We are afraid of honestly knowing the answers – OUR answers.

Why do we run away? Why do we hide?

Perhaps the truth of OUR answers doesn’t fit our picture of what we expected or hoped things would look like. Perhaps we are frightened of the consequences it will have on our life. Perhaps the truth of OUR answers knocking on our door will open up realities so painful that we do our best to avoid it. We are afraid of the responsibility that comes with knowing what we now wanted…..what we really wanted.

We are afraid to discover that we have wasted time. We are afraid that we will have to admit we’ve made mistakes. We are afraid of what other people think when we change direction. We are afraid of losing what is familiar, even if it is causing us pain. We are afraid that once we let go of what we are holding into, we may never find anything worth holding into again. We are afraid that we will look foolish or worthless in the eyes of others. We are afraid of hurting or disappointing the people we love. We are afraid of so many things, that it stops us from truly enjoying being alive.

I ask myself the same question:

“If the Genie-in-a-Bottle is right here with me, what would be the one thing I would ask for?”

I would have to be honest and say, the question left me speechless for a while. And I found one answer – I just want to live life knowing I had truly lived to make a difference in the lives of others.

***
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about the things that matter.”
– Martin Luther King