FEAR OF THE FUTURE

Instead of viewing this moment in time as a crisis, consider seeing it as an emergence. You are shedding the skin of the past. A part of you is dying and a part of you is emerging. The pain feels the same but the result is different.
 


"You can't connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something .........This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." - Steve Jobs (died Oct 5, 2011).


Was he successful? It would seem so, looking through the media lens.......but truly successful in all spheres?





The root of our crisis is the wish for certainty in a world that is always faltering and uncertain. It is specifically this unrealistic demand that creates our anxiety. You think that you can truthfully analyse and manage your future until ........


Elliot D. Cohen states that if you don't have to control the outcome; if you do not expect to calculate with certainty what is by its nature uncertain; if you do not expect to solve a challenge; then you are free to relax. So relax........


There is no point in worrying over a future that is of itself uncertain; what can we control? What is in our power?


We have the power to say "I won't fear the future." We have the power to say "I won't resign myself to living a life of fear." We always have the power to say ‘no more’ to such a life.


What we don't have the power to do is to be omniscient (to have eyes in the back of our head; to see all-knowingly into the future).

Søren Kierkegaard believes the ‘Someone’ to help us is God and that a true understanding of God can only be attained by making a “personal leap of faith”. He proposed that each individual—not society or religion—is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately and authentically. As an existentialist, he referred to this state of letting go as confronting your fear. It is about accepting responsibility, not for the future but for the choices you freely make about the future.


When you avidly live with a strong sense of purpose, even 'a calling', you walk with the knowledge of what is most important to you no matter what worries you face. This means forcing yourself to walk away from your rumination and worry and to do something constructive with your life. It means having the courage to accept yourself as inherently flawed; needing help.


Blessings,
Margs xx

 

 

REFERENCES:
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855): Fear & Trembling, 2005
Elliot D Cohen: Critical Thinking Unleashed, 2009