Photo: By Keyur Nandaniya on Unsplash.
Hold the lion: Kit Pearce says facing our fears need not be as scary as it sounds
‘There is another (riskier) way to respond to fear.’
An Estonian town is locked down. Police cars broadcast an announcement: ‘A dangerous lion is on the loose! Stay at home!’ The local chief constable deals with the unprecedented emergency, but it is made worse by loud and lairy lion-deniers. Meanwhile, a timid council employee is scared witless, even though he’s already home. But (wouldn’t you know it?), a door is open in his house. The lion enters. Just as the man is about to escape, it blocks his only exit: he’s stuck – can’t go forwards, can’t go back. He must confront his paralysing fears. He inches past the old moth-eaten lion. It’s so close he feels its breath on his skin, smells its fetid musk. He escapes unscathed and is transformed, determined to live more boldly in future.
This is the storyline of a radio play I heard on BBC Radio 4 last year. It is based on a short story by the Estonian writer Martin Algus, called ‘The Lion’. I was intrigued: had an Old Testament proverb seeded the plot? The slothful man saith, ‘There is a lion without; I shall be slain in the streets’ (Proverbs 22:13; AV).
Having known many fear-full ‘duvet days’ in my time, I’d always been more interested in what the lion in the proverb represented, not the social taboo against slothfulness. Wouldn’t anyone, lazy or not, be fearful of a lion in the street?
The proverb contains social and cultural values very different to our own, focusing more on challenges to community cohesion than individual wellbeing. It frames a social taboo, nothing more. (The ten commandments prohibit various human failings, but not fear – fear is no sin.) Fear commonly leads people to falter, fall or fail. But it need not if we understand that its purpose is to keep us safe. Safety at all costs is often crippling, but there is another (riskier) way to respond to fear.
In the Old Testament, Samson and Daniel are two archetypes of faith. One, a Nazarene, was consecrated from the womb. He became possessed of superhuman strength when the spirit of the Lord descended upon him. He famously despatched a ferocious lion with his bare hands, finding honey within its carcass days later. (Still later he transformed the incident into an allegorical riddle, which captures the unexpected benefits of facing fears.)
Daniel, facing execution, stepped inside the lions’ den with his fears under control: Jehovah would stop the mouths of the lions. Both characters stand out as heroes in the sea of faith. Most of the rest of the faithful are minnows in comparison, yet kin.
It has never been, is not, nor ever will be, easy to act in accord with the best of human nature (as Samson learned in later life). Like falling off a log, it has always been easier to fall short of the best of our humanity, especially when fear inveigles itself into our inner life, then misshapes our conduct. But even falling short repeatedly doesn’t have to mean we can never recover ourselves, or cannot permit others to assist us. Quotidian acts of confessing and facing our weaknesses can transform them into unexpected strengths. This has been intuited and understood in all religions and faith traditions worth anything. But it is still not easy. Still no panacea.
‘Even falling short repeatedly doesn’t have to mean we can never recover ourselves, or cannot permit others to
assist us.’
My favourite Henning Mankell novel, Italian Shoes, is about another fear: facing past mistakes. A reclusive retired surgeon, Frederick Welin, has been living alone on an isolated Swedish island for many years. He’s in hiding from past errors of judgement. In his youth, he bolted from his first meaningful commitment, cruelly disappearing without explanation. Decades later, he resigned rather than accept a reprimand, after amputating a swimmer’s good arm. She had been an Olympic hopeful. Even if he had operated on the correct arm, he would have discovered that no amputation was necessary. The story opens at winter’s end, when his first love invades his ice-locked island. In the shared journey that ensues, he is confronted with – and at last faces – his mistakes and his flawed character.
An ancient proverb from Zhuangzi appears in the book’s frontispiece, and within the story itself: ‘When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten.’ Deep winter sea ice and a slow spring thaw represent Welin’s interior life. Shoes act as an extended metaphor of his life’s journey – his missteps and later faltering steps in the right direction. Bespoke artisan-made shoes, gifted to him by a daughter he knew nothing of, represent the right fit, which had always been lacking in his life and relationships. The surrounding sea ice has melted when he organises an unprecedented summer party, attended by some of those wronged in his past, and new friends. His heart and his relationships are thawing. Having at last faced himself, his past mistakes and his fears, he readies himself for new challenges, now possessing those bespoke shoes.
Fears inevitably emerge within all of us, in many guises, confronting us with challenges great and small. This is not a time to flee or look to slick formulas. Quakers habitually perform a simple foundational practice. We pause and look inward for the Inner Light, and seek guidance within silence, wishing to preserve our personal and collective peace. It has served us well across many generations.
Stoics essentially do the same, but do it differently, reasoning their way towards wise conduct. Whether tranquillity is maintained is their litmus test. Daoists practise alignment with an intelligence woven into the fabric of everything, euphemistically called the Dao, also through stillness.
As non-dualists, they know that fear and courage form a wholly-connected aspect of human nature. More of one entails less of the other. Unlike theists, no one is testing them for their own good. There is no falling short. No redemption is necessary. At its best, their art is one of nonresistance to the natural cycles of balance and unbalance, harmony and disharmony, ever-turning cycles of change, very like bodily systems of homeostasis and the seasons.
In all wisdom traditions worth their salt, there is an overarching adage. It goes something like this: ‘In life, no blame. Never force it, but face it, then go with it.’
