A map. A shovel. Courage. Resolve.
Our fears hide from us important and useful parts of ourselves. How do we find and excavate what lies behind fear?
You need a map. You need a shovel. To dig through what you may find, you need courage and resolve. And to pick up your shovel after you have dropped it, you need a special kind of courage.
What You Show
It is common in many cultures to believe that a strong person does not have strong fears. Or, having them, keeps them hidden. As a teacher, you are encouraged by culture and tradition to appear strong, especially in front of your students. Other teachers will seem strong and unafraid, and you will understand that you are to seem this way as well.
So you will have learned to present yourself as if you do not have fears. Stage fright, confidence, self-esteem terrors — whatever your fears may be, you will have already learned not to reveal them to your students.
This may be appropriate. What you show your students should be about their learning, not about you. I am not recommending that you reveal your fears to your students in order to better understand them yourself. When you tell your students about you, which you do each moment you stand before them, you should reveal what best serves their learning. There is no need to reveal more.
Treasure
If you want greater abilities as a teacher, you yourself must find the places of fear inside yourself, the places you are blind to, and go beyond them. This means digging into areas that are dark and tender that you may have avoided.
If you are clever, you will have explanations for these areas. You will know why you do not look there, why there is no need. Reason can be useful, but reasoning about your fears is like learning to swim only from lecture. While you may be able to reveal some true things about your fears using reason, you will not be digging. To dig, you must listen to the language of fear, and you must engage with that lexicon.
What is the treasure behind the fear? For some of us it is a strength that we were sure we did not have, perhaps pretended we had, perhaps pretended for so long that we nearly believed it to be so. This treasure can be a true strength come to light. It can be freeing ourselves of the need to protect the fear. Liberty. Clearer vision. It can be many things.
As teachers we must be aware that our protected fears detract from our teaching ability. To avoid our fears we must look away from them, and we must keep looking away from them. Over time this focus on not seeing becomes an ingrained habit upon which we layer compelling explanations for why we do not dig in that spot. We cannot see this area, cannot use what is there, cannot go beyond. We limit our ability to teach anything that touches this.
If your intent as a teacher is to become excellent, use this intent to improve your best tool: you. If, instead of protecting a fear, you can turn your attention to something that betters you, you will be a better teacher. If, instead of looking around a fear, you see through it and past it, you will be able to see more of yourself and the world. You can only teach what you can see.
The excavation of your own fears is a terrifying undertaking. It is only worthwhile if you mean to have your own excellence.
A Map
If you know where your fears are, you have a map. If you do not, you must find your fears. To find your fears, look where you do not want to. Is there something you prefer not to look at, a trait in yourself you would prefer not to face, or perhaps a person who you find repulsive?
This is your map.
You will find reasons to look away, and they will be sensible, intelligent, and compelling. The better the reasons are, the louder they become in your own mind as you turn your focus on some particular place inside you, the more likely this is the place to dig.
Obtaining a map is that simple.
A Shovel
This is your attention, your willingness to look. When the shovel of your attention hits difficult matters through which you must dig and you are sure it is time to turn away, you are likely near something worthwhile. When you encounter clear and rational explanations of why you are wasting time, how this digging will hurt you or change you, suspect your fear’s defenses.
To begin to disable these defenses, find in yourself the willingness to change. To be uncomfortable. To look at the fears without self-condemnation, without judgment. Accept the warnings without agreeing or disagreeing. This will allow you to see more clearly. This will allow you to dig more effectively.
Courage
The closer you to come to a fear that is about your self-image, that questions your identity, the more you will need courage. In addition to sensible reasons why you you should not look there, you may feel a simple yet compelling sense of dread.
Courage is many things, but it is not lack of fear. It is moving forward anyway. It is your willingness to look, even when what you are looking at challenges what is dear to you.
There are many tools in the kit that is courage and they vary from person to person. I will say this, and perhaps it will help: when you risk change and loss of what you know, which is what courage is about, you may well end up strengthening what you cherish most, after you have broken through. This is not uncommon. But it is not certain.
Courage is the willingness to be terrified and yet go forward. Even when you have stopped, even when you have stepped back. To pick up your shovel even after you have dropped it.
Breaking through
When your shovel digs through the fear, you will know because the fear will change. It may not vanish entirely, or it may, but it will be smaller, weaker. You will have put holes into it. It will no longer be a barrier.
Every fear covers a treasure, but even if you know this to be true from repeated excavations, you may feel that this new fear is different, that this one is best left alone.
And perhaps this particular fear is not worth the struggle and cost to dig through. Perhaps the treasure behind this one is not worth the work and the risk. It may well be so. Only you can decide.
But there is a treasure here. Even this one. The map, the shovel, the courage — these are yours. Also yours is the choice.
