Seriously.

In one day of driving to and from the school I work at, I encounter nearly every form of demise in a variety of all shapes and sizes.  People drive on the opposite side of the road here, drive head on at you from either side of the road, and you are constantly dodging dogs, children, monks, tuk-tuks, other motorbikes, super-sized trucks, and paving equipment.

Right now, they are doing some construction.  A minor inconvenience of six to twenty foot ditches are running alongside the road with absolutely no warning or boundaries.  I call this part of my drive “The Graveyard”.  But somehow, even through the mayhem, I still make it to my destination unscathed, every day.

Most of these steps can also be applied to Life…

I’m slightly humored that this new event has brought about some valuable lessons I’m applying to more than just driving, and I hope they can help you, or at least make you laugh…

1. Have someone show you the ropes… or at least the brakes

When in doubt, get someone to help.  My friend Hilton took me out to drive on my first day.  I was hoping to go for a gentle ride around slow and straight roads.  What I got instead was a very real taste of what it is like to drive in Thailand.

We went down very windy roads, dirt and gravel roads, practiced skidding emergency stops, sped through a pack of wild attack dogs, then onto a road covered with paving equipment, spraying water trucks and slippery oiled asphalt chunks.  The traffic was down to one lane and oncoming traffic squeezed us up against the six inch shoulder.  Once that event was complete, back to a dirt road where geese proceeded to rear up and nearly attack us.

That night, it rained, and I was sure I had seen it all.  Even though I hoped for a more gentle introduction to riding, I realized that I would need to be comfortable in each of those situations, and inevitably they got me through my first week of driving where I needed to use each skill I learned in my training.

2. Assume everyone around you is going to do something stupid

Not to be a pessimist but I’ve discovered something that has made me much more happy.  I now assume that people around me are going to do something stupid. On the road, or in life, people are typically looking out for number one, and you are not it.  Really, some days as I am weaving in and out of Songtows (trucks that act as busses), motorbikes piled high with people and dogs, and ruthless truck drivers, I realize it is a miracle that we are all able to make it to our destinations alive.  If I assume we’re all just a bunch of fuck-ups trying to get to our destination, life and driving becomes a lot more bearable.

3. Don’t worry about what’s behind you, or you’ll crash

If I’m too worried about what is happening behind me, I start to get very overwhelmed and miss what I should be looking at:  what’s happening right in front of me.  Driving here is scary because trucks move at a much faster speed behind you and can invariably push you off the road if you aren’t paying attention.  But, I’m learning more and more to ignore them, take my time, and claim my space.

4. Change your speed when you need to

I recently read some statistics about how many traffic fatalities there are a year.  He made an excellent point of showing the relationships between speeding up and fatalities.  Obviously, the faster you go, the longer it takes to stop.  This is something important to keep in mind in life, as well as driving.

That said, oftentimes it is important to speed up.  I’ve gotten out of many near-catastrophes by speeding up and getting around the situation.  Being able to read the situation helps, and knowing how to change and adapt will get you around turns, ups and downs, and out of dangerous situations fast.

5. Claim your space and own it

This is a very exciting concept for me.  I’ve never really “owned” the space around me.  When you drive here, you very much have to own your space, or you will get run over.  I imagine it must be like being a quarterback and picking your path and going balls-out around and past obstacles.  At the stoplights, you might have twenty or thirty motorbikes lined up with you and when it is “Go Time”, you’ve got to claim that space and go for it.

6. And as Teacher Bill says, “When all else fails, and the road gets rocky, hold on to that Som’Bitch and keep on driving!”

There are so many times I want to Stop Driving.  The road is dusty and gravely (or wet!), the turn too tight, or a big-monster-truck-with-wheels-bigger-than-life cuts so close that I can smell the brake fluid.  My natural reaction is that I want to stop.  But I can’t.

So I take a deep breath, grip my handles tighter, and make it through.  Every time, I’ve lived, and every time, I get just a little bit tougher.  I’m learning more and more to sit through uncomfortable situations rather than trying to avoid them—and what do you know?—I’m getting better at dealing with them, too!!

Hope this finds you well and here are some pictures of my epic journey….

Why do people move?

What makes them uproot and leave everything they’ve known for a great unknown beyond the horizon?

Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar?

Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult?

The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of finding a better life.

-Yann Martel, Life of Pi

How far would you go to find a better life?

To what extent would you allow yourself to reinvent your life and rediscover who you are and what you really want?

Taking a journey of self-discovery is the most rewarding thing you can do with your life.  You will learn more about your thought patterns and limiting behaviors, realize who you are apart from other people’s expectations, and learn to let go of everything that is important to you. Many people fear being alone.  But you can only truly discover who you are by taking yourself out of your normal environment and face your fears, head on.

I once read: do what you fear the most.  I questioned this philosophy and realized it made perfect sense; when you recognize you’re afraid of something, you have an opportunity to confront that fear and move past it.  By addressing your fear, you clear old behaviors and renew yourself.  More becomes possible when you remove the fear.

The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.

I believe we are put on this earth to live our mission and overcome our fears.  Sometimes this comes to us in stages, but often times it comes to us through crisis.  We become broken down by circumstance—which forces us to reevaluate our life.  When we face these questions, we demand answers.  But oftentimes, we are forced to move through challenging situations and find the answers by facing our fears.

What We Fear Most

With each article I have read on fear, I have noticed a consistent theme: Fear is a perception that exists only in your imagination. If we imagine something to be scary, then we believe it is scary.  The mind has no way of distinguishing between fanciful thoughts and reality.  It is based on conditioning and experience.  Therefore, the best way to conquer your fears is to adjust your mindset and face the fear head on.

1. Fear of Losing Everything

Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed.  And I am allowed no explanation?  I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven?  In that case, what is the purpose of reason…?  Is it no more than to shine at practicalities—the getting of food, clothing and shelter?  Why can’t reason give greater answers?  Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer?

Are you afraid of losing everything?  Many of us stress ourselves out because we feel like we might lose it all. This fear creates constant uneasiness about our ability to maintain our basic needs.  Fear creates a fictitious solitary stance in the world; we believe we are in this on our own, and must always fend for ourselves.  Even in the crisis of ‘losing everything’, the reality is that other people would come to our aid.  We have friends, family, and loved ones that would step up and see us through a rough period.  So stop worrying!  Even if you did lose everything, you wouldn’t lose your support system and networks.

2. Fear of Being Alone

I must say a word about fear.  It is life’s only true opponent.  Only fear can defeat life.  It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know.  It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy.  It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease.  It begins in your mind, always.

In the book, Life of Pi, the main character, Pi, is traveling with his family via a large cargo ship from India to Canada.   His family runs a zoo and is transferring many of the animals to a zoo in Canada.  During the trip, the ship begins to sink and many of the animals are released into the ocean.  Pi manages to take refuge on a rescue boat with several of the animals.  Within a few moments, he watched the boat sink with his family on board and was trapped in a boat with a zebra, hyena, orangutan, and a Bengal Tiger.  Imagine the fear and utter confusion you would feel in this situation!

In our lives, we are never really alone.  There are internet connections, family and friends, social networks and people we can rely upon to get back on our feet.  While our situation might be scary or unfavorable, there are ALWAYS other people around to support us and get us through our fears.  Most of the time when a situation presents itself where we feel alone, it is only an opportunity to recognize a fear, and move forward in our lives by confronting what scares us.  This process feels lonely because facing fear is something we must do alone.

As the story progresses, the hyena eats the zebra and the orangutan and is eventually taken by the tiger.  The boy is left on the boat for a total of 227 days with the tiger.  He learns eventually that he can no longer ignore the situation.  He must confront it and tame the tiger.

3. Fear of Being Hurt or Dying

I had to tame him.  It was at that moment that I realized this necessity.  It was not a question of him or me, but of him and me.

In my opinion, we have to accept that fear- just like the tiger- is not going to go away.  It is no longer about overcoming your fears, but realizing that they will never go away, and taming them. I do not know a single individual that has completely overcome fear.  At best, we can recognize it, determine where it is holding us back, and move forward despite the fear we have.

None of us want to be hurt, or die.  But, in the course of our lifetime, is it possible to avoid either of these? Unless you have some superhuman quality I don’t, we’re all going to end up scuffed up from time to time and heading to whatever lies beyond this lifetime.  Consider it an adventure, and get on with it.

4. Fear of Failure

How does fear of failure get in your way?  Are there areas in your life that you stopped short because you were worried that you were not up to the task?

One major realization I had that helped me move past the fear of failure was this:  If I am living my life on purpose, and I am being assisted by the Universe…I can’t really ever fail.  Because, in effect, I am representing the Universe.

This takes away my personal responsibility a little bit and helps me to relax and move forward despite my fear.  I just pretend I am an agent of the Universe, and stop taking it so personally.

But, what do we do when fear and failure get the best of us?  …When we are at our lowest lows, it is best to keep in mind this is just a test…

This is Just a Test

When we face adversity, we want to give up.  We want to hide in bed.  We want to do nothing.  It doesn’t feel safe.  We feel alone.  We are struggling in an unpredictable situation with our teeth clenched and our fists raised.

But this is the test. The test is to see how we react in the face of fear.  Are we going to tame it, or hide from it.  Are we going to step up and work hard, or are we going to feel defeated?  The test is to step up in the face of fear and to know down to our bones that we will survive.  We will survive, no matter what it takes, and we will learn to look for the miracles and come to expect them, even in our most dire state.  This, my friends, is how we tame our fears.

I was giving up.  I would have given up—if a voice hadn’t made itself heard in my heart.  The voice said, “I will not die.  I refuse it.  I will make it through this nightmare.  I will beat the odds, as great as they are.  I have survived so far, miraculously.  Now I will turn miracle into routine.  The amazing will be seen every day.  I will put in all the hard work necessary.  Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die.  Amen.”