Wanzology

What Are You Afraid Of?

 Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. What's happening? How are you doing? How are you? Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY this day before Halloween. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, breaking out the sinister voice. And, uh, yeah, how you doing? You good? Are you good? I hope you're good. I'm kind of in between and it happens, you know, being not quite good, not quite not good, just kind of meh, just kind of here. It happens. Well, you know, I, I thought in the spirit of the season, which is Halloween, basically the official kickoff of the holiday shopping season, considering I saw my first Christmas trees and light decorations oh, about the 3rd of October, pretty soon. It'll be Labor Day, Christmas layaway season. I really hate that, but it is what it is.

For today, I would like to broach the subject of fear, given that it's Halloween and all, what are you afraid of? Everybody is afraid of something. What are you afraid of? And how do you know when you're afraid of something? Fear, it has been said, is a great, it’s a great code for ‘EF-Everything-And-Run’, or, ‘Face-Everything-And-Recover’, or ‘False-Expectations-Appearing-Real’. Now, it's that last one, ‘False-Expectations-Appearing-Real’ in my experience that is the most prevalent, the most well-hidden form of fear that everyone has. Everybody has it. They can lie and say, nah, I'm not, “I'm not really a scared of anything.”, lie. Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie! Everybody is a-scared of something.

Me? I'm afraid of many things. I'm afraid I'll be alone the rest of my life. I'm afraid my days of being a good performer, singer, songwriter, bass player, instrumentalist, are behind me. I fear that I don't know how to love very well. And I fear, I fear that I'm a failure. There, I put it out there. It has been said that, you know, when you face your fears, they tend to have less power. I used to say, “Dance with your devils and steal their power!”, their fear. But as I got older, it's like the devil got stronger and I got weaker. Got caught trying to steal. Ha ha ha, “Been caught stealing once when I was five!”, I'm going to remind you right now that what I'm about to start talking about is a representation of me personally. There may be similarities with you or not.

Everybody is afraid of something. I mean, there are movies that I will not watch. I will not watch Pitch Black with Vin Diesel. Um, I started to watch it once, but it kind of freaked me out. I think it has more to do with things being in the dark. There's another movie that's more modern that Jake Gyllenhaal is the main character in, and it's called LIFE having to do with extraterrestrial life that they resuscitate on this, uh, space station as they're coming back to earth, I can't watch that. I don't know why freaks me out, man! Been this way since like the late 60s! I couldn't watch the Hitchcock movie The Birds Anybody ever seen that, The Birds? Hitchcock is great, man. He's, he's like the suspense king. I think all the ‘masters’ have gone back and studied his work and figured out how to make things, when I say things, I mean life, appear scary.

Cause I mean, I don't, I don't look at crows the same anymore. I don't look at seagulls the same anymore. Oh no. Always got my eyeballs on them suckers. Always. Cause you know, if they start getting kind of uppity, I'm going to be ready for them.

But most of my really serious, dangerous fears, as with everyone else. My fears are inside. Almost every fear is the same in the sense that it's driven by what you don't know, what you can't see, and what you don't understand. Not knowing is, is horrible. Knowing is great. As G. I. Joe says, “Knowing is half the battle!”, but man, if you don't know half of something, if you don't know what the day is going to bring, you don't, you don't know what someone's going to say after they've said, “Have you got a couple minutes? I really need to talk to you.”, yeah man, that's really scary. That's really scary! When I was working at Microsoft, the big thing was cups of coffee. If the boss came in and said, “Hey, what are you doing? Let's go grab a cup of coffee.”, everybody knew that person was about to be let go. It's so weird now. I don't ever say that to anybody.
“Let's grab a cup of coffee.”, I never say that, ever!

Not knowing is the big fear monger. You don't know whether he or she likes you. You don't know whether you're doing a good job at work. You don't know whether your child respects you, or really loves you, or they're just pretending. You don't know whether your significant other is cheating. You don't know if that person behind you, looking at their phone, realizes that the light is red. See what I mean? There are fears everywhere. Everywhere! And how we approach them has much to do with who we are and how we feel at any given moment, I think.

I've taken this apart, I'm still, I'm still doing therapy around fears, I have, I have lots of fear. I have lots of fear, especially when it comes around emotions. Growing up a small skinny kid who got picked on a lot with a hair trigger temper, I got beat up a lot. I got beat up a lot because I ‘lipped off’ and got mad really fast. And I got mad really fast when somebody insulted me or made fun of me. I really didn't know how to handle it. Something as simple as getting just shoved, I mean not pushed but shoved through a doorway, and I would just flip out. I remember being in class one day, and someone started going, Hey Wansley, do you shine your warts with shine al vinyl? “Shine al vinyl, Wansley, shine al vinyl, Wans shines his warts with shine…”, I got so pissed! Got into a fight, off to the principal's office I went. And because I was small, and fairly light, it didn't take much to ‘vanquish’ me, I didn't know how to fight. But I'll never forget when I got home, clothes were rustled up and there's marks on my face, “What's wrong? What happened?”,
“I got into a fight.”
“Why did you get into a fight? You shouldn't fight, Michael.”

Mom's all about the ‘turn the other cheek’ and ‘forgiveness’, and she doesn't realize that, you know what? I was trying to defend myself because someone was making fun of my good name. Oh, but Dad came home. And, of course, Mom told Dad.
“What happened?”
Told him what happened. He kind of looked away, and then he looked down at me and he goes, “Well, why didn't you defend yourself?”
And I just looked up at him, and at the time, I just felt empty. Mom was already disappointed in me because I had gotten into a fight. Dad was disappointed in me because I got into a fight and lost. You know what that does to a small child? Well, you probably know now, but I tell you what, in the 70s, nobody cared, nobody cared. And over the years, what I didn't know was that those encounters that I had in elementary school combined with some other encounters that I had at home planted this tree, huge tree, like a sequoia type tree, deeply rooted and firmly planted. I was afraid no one would ever like me. No one would ever be my friend. I would never be ‘good enough’ for anybody. My dad could have taught me how to punch, maybe that would have helped. My mom would have said, “I'm sure you did the best you can, try not to fight.”, but they didn't do that because I think emotionally, they didn't understand where I was at. They didn't understand how I felt. I don't think they understood what it was like to be ‘me’. No matter how I explained it.

By the time I reached high school, ninth grade, high school, I finally figured out that I could be a smartass, and it would save my life. Somebody got on me one time and I said, “Yeah, well at least my mama's knuckles don't drag the ground when she walks!”,
and everybody stopped looking at me and started looking at that other kid. And that's when I knew how to get out of these situations so that I wouldn't get angry and all it did was develop this smart-ass person that you're listening to right now. And when I went to college, I was a smart ass all the time. Because it made people smile and they liked me, and that made me happy. Sarcasm has been my bosom buddy for decades. But there are situations where sarcasm doesn't work. It's uncalled for. It's insensitive. Well, then the other fear comes up, “I don't know.”

Fear of not knowing is another thing that people fear. They don't want to seem like they don't know something. Nobody likes to not know something. Heaven forbid you not know how to get ‘there’, people will think you're stupid. “Don't you know? How come you don't know? I thought you knew” ...Well, then you start feeling some sort of way. At least I do. Inadequacy, like sarcasm, they're like ‘riders’ in the car. And inadequacy is what, as a creative, as a musician, I have to fight constantly. Because unbeknownst to most normal people, musicians, artists of any kind compare themselves to everything.
Everyone. I mean, when I was a kid, I was either compared to Donny Osmond or Michael Jackson. Which is kind of odd, considering they're two different colors, and I'm the same color as one of them, so I don't know how I got compared to Donny Osmond, but it was there. And as I got older, my self-esteem was driven by my musical talent.

So much so that I believed everything that everyone told me, “You're gonna be famous!”,
“Dude, you are so good!”, “I love it when you sing, Michael. You're gonna be a star one day!” …and I believed every frickin word of it. So much so that by the time I hit my 40s, and realized there's no old people out there, touring the country, the world. Look at the radio, look at, look at videos. I didn't see anybody who looked like me, didn't see anybody who sounded like me. And all those old feelings, from elementary school of not being liked, not being good enough, there they were. Shaking my hand like we were the best of friends. I won't even go into the whole relationship part of it because that's a whole different animal. That's a whole different cut of pasta. You know what I mean? Feelings are a lot like pasta. Kind of generally made the same but there's different shapes, different sizes, different uses. Some don't go with certain things it's, it's just weird. It's just weird. And now as a fully formed adult, getting to the end of middle age, I find myself getting on my own case, because some of these fears I have not vanquished.

Some of the same fears that I had when I was 9 years old, I have now. Some of the same fears I had when I was 13, 14, I have now. A lot of the same fears I had when I was 22, 23, 25, I have now. And now it's really funny because they come dressed differently. They used to be kind of obvious, but now sometimes they'll sneak up on me dressed as, “Can you help me?”, “Have you ever?”, “Don't you remember?”, or, “I'm not sure if I know what I'm doing.”
I always love it when people say that. Because immediately I question, do I know what I'm doing? What am I doing? Why am I doing it? It can be very difficult being an adult, because all those situations that got you to being an adult, that you thought that you overcame, they’re still there.

Some people got through them very well and don't have them except in specific Rare situations, but there are some of us who can't get away from it like we can't get away from the pigment in our skin. People will overcompensate by buying extravagant clothes or just acting way ‘outside’ or who knows. But there's always a tell. There's always a tell.

Here's the newsflash, it's okay. It's okay to be afraid. It's okay to have fears. The question is, when do you recognize that you're afraid and what do you do? Because if you have no defense against being afraid your emotions will just drive your body into doing some of the silliest things and some of them emotionally are hurtful, and they leave marks. You convince yourself that that's the way it's supposed to be. No, it's not supposed to be any which way, you get to decide what everything is going to be for yourself. This is supposed to be common knowledge. And people will, of course, when they're not in the thick of it, tell you, oh, this is easy. No, it's not.

To recognize when you're afraid is a skill. One that you have to develop, and it's based on honesty. “I don't really care what anybody thinks.”
B. S. If you didn't care what anybody thought, you wouldn't worry about what clothes you're wearing, what car you're driving, what job you have, all the trinkets in your house, what color your house is, or apartment, or whatever. You wouldn't be influenced by outside forces. Everything would be driven from inside. And it's okay. It's okay to be driven from inside, but the problem is people. People will compare themselves to you or you to them and then it starts getting real complicated, real fast. If you're not aware, then it's happening.

Because once you're aware that, well, “Yeah, Steve Perry of journey is a great singer.”,
I don't sing like him. “Mel Torme was a great singer.”, well, I don't sing like him. “Lou Rawls was a killer singer!”, well I don't sing like him and that's okay. You see what I did there? I just gave you an insight to the little things that I go through in my head. Because I compare myself all the bloody time. I can't get away from it. As a creative, I'm always, quote unquote, ‘worried’ about whether someone's gonna like me or not and I can't get rid of it. I have to learn to live with it, and some days, some moments of days, are better than others. But most of the time, right now, most of my life, I'm alone, and that's harder, much harder, when you're alone.

I think Bon Jovi said it best in the song, Dead or Alive: “Sometimes when you're alone, all you do is think.”
That's not always good because, you know, as cool as we are, we treat ourselves horribly sometimes. What do you do if you're afraid of you? How do you function? When you're afraid that you're going to, or could do, something that you don't want to do. What happens when a feeling comes and it's the last feeling you ever wanted or needed? Hopefully, hopefully, you'll remember what it took me forever to learn, pretty much all feelings are temporary.

So what do you do? I've found great strength in not doing anything. If I feel some sort of way, I will stop doing whatever it is that I'm doing and not do anything for a little while. Because what that does means if I don't act on whatever it is I'm thinking, the odds of me doing something I would regret decrease greatly. I don't call anybody. I try to stay off the interwebs. There are just some days that I should have a sign that says, “Not fit for human consumption!”, so that no one will talk to me because I just don't ‘feel’ like it. And I know, because of history, that it's temporary. ‘Something's’ going to happen, it always does. I'll notice a dandelion or someone will drive by with a really loud car and it'll distract me, or I'll see someone and their dirty clothes pushing their shopping cart with their tattered shoes, blanket over their head and be grateful I am exactly who I am at that very moment. And realize that life could be worse.

Oh, by the way, don’t ever say that out loud, because the universe is always listening.
Don't ever say, “Well, it could be worse.”, just don't do that. Personal experience. What I do suggest though is that you slow down, stop if you can, just step out to the side of life and take about 15 seconds. Take about 15 to 20 seconds, longer if it feels good. To understand what you're afraid of because We get all the stimuli from outside. And sometimes, our body just kind of does what it wants to do.

Vagas nerve, look that up. The vagas nerve will trigger itself. It's the main protector of your body. Vagas nerve, man. When somebody says, “’Lizard brain’, your ‘lizard brain’ is trying to connect you, that's that vagas nerve, the most primitive part of your body
keeps your ass alive. But it doesn't have a depth of knowledge about anything other than, “I gotta go!”, “Oh my god, HELP!”
“Oh damn, something's happening.”, oh no, something's happening and your brain goes, “Oh, step over here for a sec. Wait…wait. Take a deep breath. Out, in. Out…”, what's really going on? What are you afraid of? It doesn't really matter what you're afraid of because everyone's afraid of something.

Humans are afraid of a lot of things, just like animals, they want to stay alive. It's funny how the brain can mix up the difference between the outside world and the inside your head world. Different feelings, different memories, different paths of determining what’s going on.

I challenge you to do this, I challenge you to be quiet with yourself and think of things that you really don't like to happen to you, you really are uncomfortable with, and try to figure out how you ‘feel’ them, feel them, not emotionally, physically, and then what do you do, how do you get past it, because it's really strange how you can be starving Marvin, man, oh my god, I gotta eat, I gotta eat, and as soon as you open the door to a restaurant or the store, you're not hungry anymore. You don't know what you want to eat or you're walking across your abode. And it's like, “Okay, I can't find my phone. Where's my phone? Where did I leave my phone?”
10 minutes later, you've looked everywhere three or four times and it's nowhere to be found. Then all of a sudden you feel some sort of way, “Where’s my phone?!”
And then when you decide I'm going to change shoes, because it might rain, you look…oh, there it is! And then all of a sudden it's like, “Weren't you paying attention when you came over here and set it down so you could do this other thing?”
“No. “

Fear. I'll leave you with this, one of the most poignant things about fear that I learned came from the original movie, Dune. It caused me to start thinking about why I was afraid of things. Because in there, Kyle McLaughlin, the main character, he says, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer.”
When I took that apart, what I figured out is that, once you realize that you're afraid, you must get to the other side of it. You must get to whatever an action is or else, the fear will grow. And if it doesn't grow, all it's doing is camouflaging itself and the next time it appears, you won't recognize it, but it'll be the same fear. “Fear is the mind killer.”, and what I try to do is keep my mind moving. I don't necessarily have to act, but boy, I sure do have to think. And the hard part sometimes is understanding what you feel so that you can think. And therein lies the rub.

What do you feel? What do you think of what you feel? Feelings are temporary. Never forget that. Just like everything else, everything is temporary. Think about that one for a while, but don't get scared.

Alright, thanks for hanging out this week. I hope you have a happy Halloween, a safe one. I hope that, like me, maybe you live in an apartment complex and no one ever comes. So you get to go out and, on the 1st of November, buy all the candy in the world because it's half price!!

All right, y'all. Be good to yourself, okay? You're the only you you've got. So take care of it. Take care of you. And I'll see you next week.