You’ll never hear me say that I’m not afraid of anything. Because I’m afraid of a lot of things.
Here’s an example. I experienced bitter divorce as a child, like many of us did. And therefore I am afraid of divorce, and the impact it would have on both myself and my children. Therefore, I want to avoid divorce.
Therefore, I want to have an excellent marriage. Therefore, I want to have a partner who wants to be with me forever. And therefore... I want to be an excellent partner. Because that is the only way my eyes can see to solve this equation and minimize the chances of divorce. To take that fear and let it inform my own behavior.
I want to become the kind of person who divorce probably wouldn’t happen to. And whose kids it would not happen to.
There are many reasons why I'm a relatively ambitious person. One is that I have been given gifts for communication, writing, and many other things. And I want to use them. I’d hate to waste them. That feels dumb.
Another is because there are worldly things that I want, and being ambitious is the way to get them.
But the biggest reason I'm ambitious is because I'm terrified of spending my entire life doing things I hate. That's the primary reason. Fear. I'm terrified of not being free to spend my time on what I want to spend it on.
I believe it was Naval Ravikant who said "the reason to win the game is so that you can be free of it." That, to me, sounds like a statement of fear just as much as one of inspiration. The game he’s talking about, of course, is life in the middle class. Being locked in indentured servitude for your entire future. Working your entire life to earn a home, a car, and a meager retirement… and then dying and letting your grandchildren do the same thing.
I don't want to play that game. That game sucks. Which is why I'm playing it extra hard. So that, at some point, I may be done with it, and not have to play it anymore. And I can travel and read and love my family by spending time with them.
Another thing I'm terrified of is never being useful to anyone. Therefore, I want to find ways to be useful to anyone I think might appreciate what I can offer. I heard a quote recently that might be my favorite quote: “It’s hard to feel sad and useful at the same time.”
I'm terrified of never being seen as a good man. I'm terrified of never having a good woman and good children lean on me and find value in me. Therefore I'm obsessed with becoming the best man I can be.
I’m scared of not having money to invest in good things when I find them. Therefore I don’t spend money. On anything. I live my life with the simplest possible pleasures and save my money for something more important than the avoidance of boredom.
So it's both the carrot and the stick — with just about everything. But the stick isn't punishment from some external party; it’s not “jail.” It’s not being excluded from some arbitrary version of heaven or paradise.
(Although jail is a crushing place to be, and it’s actually quite a good deterrent for antisocial behavior in its own right.)
The real stick, the most powerful stick, is an internal one. It's emptiness and bitterness and loneliness. It's looking back on an entire life and seeing nothing but time. It's looking back on any given year and seeing that I did absolutely nothing of value; that all I accomplished was survival. Those are the things I'm running away from. Those are some of the things I’m afraid of.
A lot of people think that they are running towards something, but are only fooling themselves. Because if you really are running, you're running. You're sprinting. You're obsessed, and you refuse to waste one single day. Most people aren’t actually chasing what they think they’re chasing. Most people have about as much commitment to their goals as a BMW driver to his current lane on the highway.
Fear of not having something can be a stronger motivator than the desire to have it. And of course you have to be careful when playing with fear, because it can turn you into an anxious mess if you let it. The key is not to let fear rule you, but to let it inform you. To integrate it into your decision-making and your list of priorities.
We often feel paralyzed by indecision. I’m sure you’ve felt that before. Because you can't for the life of you figure out what you "want." But maybe you could try asking a different question. "What am I most afraid of?" I bet you'd get some good answers pretty damn quick if you asked yourself that question. And maybe they'd provoke some of that much-needed change in your life.
Sometimes in life, the best way to stop doing something is be scared to death of continuing to do it. Addicts hit rock bottom, smokers get treatable lung cancer, and everyday people get sick of the results of their awful habits.
Sometimes the way to avoid being like someone you dislike is to find out what exactly they’re doing, and not do any of it.
Fear of just “the unknown” isn’t all that interesting. But fear of lacking personal virtue or fear of lacking something useful and satisfying... that is good fear. That kind of fear might just drive you more than any fleeting "inspiration" ever would. Inspiration has a short half-life.
This is why I find things like seminars and self-help to be almost completely worthless. Because they are providers of inspiration. Short bursts of spiritual energy that do not last and do not create lasting change in your life.
If you’ve ever been to a seminar and it changed your life, wonderful. But let’s just be honest about what those folks are selling: what they are selling is inspiration. Not education, not durable skill sets, not lasting change; just the simple emotion of inspiration. And that’s a pretty low-value product. Especially when it costs thousands of dollars.
Fear is a good motivator because it can last. When people say that fear is a bad motivator, I have trouble understanding what they mean. Because running towards something means that you’re simultaneously running away from not that thing.
As far as I can tell, desire has fear baked right into it. It’s both at the same time. Because if you have made a decision to value something, you have simultaneously made the decision to dislike its opposite or its absence. It’s impossible to see value in something without seeing less value or anti-value in something else. That’s how value works. That’s how priorities work.
So I’m not sure fear can be disentangled from desire.
Even when it comes to sex: the most basic and universal human desire. Sex is raw and pure. It wants. It wants to have. It wants to feel, almost always selfishly. It is a cup that simply wants to be filled.
But if you look closely, most people have sexual desires that also betray what they’re afraid of.
A desire for safety in sex indicates a fear of not being safe. A desire for obedience in sex indicates a fear of not being worthy of it. A desire for predictability in sex indicates a fear of surprise or impulse; it indicates an embraced comfort zone that one does not want to leave.
And this is also why the “best lovers” are often the worst partners: because they are embracing only the rawest, most carnal desire in their sex. The only thing they’re afraid of is not getting what they want. Some people’s sex is sociopathic: the only thing they’re afraid of is not feeling the most possible pleasure. How awful. What a pathetic way to treat the most beautiful thing in the world.
I’ll take a slow, insecure lover who lets her sex betray her fears to me any day. Because she’s being honest about who she is. And that vulnerability is sexy.
When you buy one thing, you sell another; when you’re long something, you’re always short something else. Fear is inseparable from everything we do. For every desire we have leading us, the complementary fear is behind us, pushing.
If you really spend some time thinking about what you’re afraid of, it will be almost impossible for you to stand still any longer. You will be driven to action by the pure risk of staying where you are.
As I discussed in “Absolute Truth”, you’ll eventually want to be living out a character — a version of yourself that is true and respectable and happy and successful. A version of you with positive traits and good habits. A version of you that you can actually achieve, and is worth working towards and worth maintaining.
But maybe you don’t have that yet. If not, you can at least decide what you want to run away from. Before you decide what you want to live with, maybe you have to decide what you can’t live with. And that’s a great start. So says every good sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Drink some water because you’re terrified of not drinking enough,
JDR
“How ‘bout them transparent dangling carrots?” - Alanis Morissette
This is wonderful.