Today I decided to climb a tree which I hadn't climbed in over fifteen years. We have both grown taller and I've free climbed a lot more challenging obstacles in this time. When I focus on my core and the connection with nature, there is an ease to these actions, bringing me to the top. There to greet me were a few childhood memories and a freedom I've long missed. This is where I pause to look around, take out my phone and capture this moment. This is also when I break the connection I had with the tree. This is when I felt fear.
The ground all of a sudden seemed an unreachable distance away. The grass didn't appear soft from up there but much more reminiscent of concrete stone. Any false move would result in a slip. Each branch was spaced so far apart it made me question my own previous actions. How had I made it up there? How was I not falling? And how was I going to get down? Maybe seconds had gone by and with each passing moment the fear compounded.
Fear is a powerful emotion because of how it works in the body. Fear can release chemicals in the body which cause the rational state of mind to fail. The fight or flight reaction causes adrenaline to surge through the body which makes your heart race. There have been people known to die from fear because of heart problems. This is not something I am worried about. However, I am worried that my body is going to become overwhelmed with the fear my mind had started to create. A body filled with fear shakes, grows weak with paralysis, and collapses. A body filled with adrenaline shakes, grows stiff with energy, runs and trips. Nothing good would come out of either reaction. The most important question to answer at that moment was how to get to that same zen zone which had brought me up there to begin with.
An idea pops into my head. There is a scene in the movie, After Earth, which puts the zen zone theory into words. Now stay with me here, I'm not going to quote the movie. I specifically think of this movie because of an epiphany moment I had when Will Smith's kid had to fight an alien. The idea that fear isn't real. It is created in the mind and so like any other emotion, it can be controlled.
How does one control emotions? Practice, patience and extreme focus. What was the difference between looking up at the brances while climbing and looking down at the branches while descending? Perspective. I'd been focusing on what was right in front of me. Being in the "now," of that moment took away everything else and allowed me to enter a zen zone. Where energy is like synergy because all our atoms are communicating at the same level. When I lost focus of what was immediately in front of me, I left the zone. Pulling away from that moment and looking around at the world underneath me made me question the future (climbing down), and the past (how had I gotten up? ) both of which distracted away from the "now." And that was it. That was my answer. Fear was created when one focused on anything other than the "now." Because past and future thinking created regrets we can't change and hypotheticals we can't answer, it creates an anxiety associated with fear.
That immediate moment was knowing I had been fine without perspective. It was keeping a conscious and rational mind. The "now," was a branch in front of me. The green and amber pine needles covering the blue sky above me. My palm rested on the thick chunks of bark which held firm to the branch. The years had toughened the outer layer of this tree and it held me. Inches thick, I could remember when the tree would have flaked it's bark away under the strength of my fingertips pulling up my weight.
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