The fear within

I have a fear of buses. It’s alright if I’m on the bus, hanging on for dear life trying to remain standing and not fall on the granny next to me, that’s an adventure. But when I’m cruising along the road, hair waving in the wind, like a happy, high, hippy child on my two-wheeled-weapon of choice, and a bus comes flying past, ripping me from my blissful daydreams of daisies and kittens and ah-who-am-I- kidding- I-hate-cats, sending me careening uncontrollably into the gutter – I get a little scared. Bicycles that get it on with buses only end up in several thousand tiny pieces, and even the widest road doesn’t seem wide enough to fit their two bustling egos. The same goes for trucks. It’s at this juncture that the car-drivers among you will shout “well get off the road”, but the grannies I attack on buses also don’t appreciate being bowled over on the footpath, so your point is null and void. Anyway, fear and persecution isn’t the platform from which I’d like to launch my Cycle Instead campaign, and the point is really the fear, not the cycling.

Fear is an all powerful emotion. It drives humans to do ridiculous, regrettable, if not totally disgusting things. Or conversely, to be so paralysed as to make like a rabbit in the headlights and freeze. Some people seem to get high off the adrenaline of scaring themselves shitless, others, like me, would rather run screaming from deaths door than stare it bravely in the face. More sinister people get high off other peoples fear. Most fear is fear of pain, fear is a basic instinct that says “fuuccckkk!” and a choose-your-own-adventure with only two choices; Fight or Flight.

But there is another level of fear that plagues my mind, fear of the unknown. A thread of fear that perpetually runs throughout my thoughts is the fear of growing up and getting old and becoming somebody who I wouldn’t like. Of not succeeding in doing the things I want to do and at being a good person. It’s such an abstract and useless fear, that I can’t quite decide what to do with it.

Fear is important, but if it’s in charge, it gets me nowhere at all. Bravery takes fear by the scruff of the neck and tells it where to go. I was thinking today, that if I have a hero, it is probably the man who stood in front of approaching tanks in Tiananmen Square on that fateful day. If I have only an ounce of his bravery, dealing with the buses, bees and minor confrontations of everyday life will be a breeze.

But for now, the bus wins and I'll continue to avoid arriving too early, too late, walking into rooms full of strangers and eating pips.

So here in (slightly over) Minute Movie format – My fears.