How much of your life is driven by fear?

Lots of people tell me they are driven by dreams. Desires. Hopes. Or just the love of something.

Its interesting to pay attention to their answers because sometimes (not all the time) you will find something entirely different underneath. Like this conversation I had with my friend Tom who graduated from UC Berkeley.

Me: "So, what's next for you?"

Tom: "I'm looking to do my postgraduate at Caltech, then probably a PhD in robotics."

M: "You like it that much huh?"

T: "Well DT, you know me. I'm not gonna survive a "real" job and I don't think there's anything out here for me. But I'd be interested in that internship program at JPL though."

M: "Oh. NASA in 5 years?"

T: "Yup. NASA in 5 years."

Tom hopes a stint at the Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena will eventually help him get to NASA as an engineer. He's well on his way there now.

I've known Tom for 8 years now. He doesn't want to end up in a staid corporate job like his brother Jim. Tom's a nice guy but he's a loner and a geek. With braces. The sort that attracts bullies. He's received his fair share of wedgies right up to sophomore year in college so he figures a research organization like NASA is his only chance at a semblance of a respectable future. It became his dream.

But flip the dream over and I saw fear. The corporate jungle isn't always kind to people like Tom. He may not get a job he can perform. He's not being pulled to JPL. He's pushed there by fear. The dream of going to geek heaven is a by-product of that fear.

I think we're no different. We study because we fear that without qualifications we won't get a job. We stick to a job we hate because we fear the consequence of joblessness. We go to the movies on weekends because we fear boredom. And we dislike going out alone because we fear loneliness.

I don't know about you but it feels scary to think we live in constant fear of one thing or another. It sounds far-fetched and we deny it. If only our Freudian slips didn't give us away every time. Example:

You: "Oops, I need to run and put money in the parking meter"

Judy: "Why worry? I see no traffic officers."

You: "No lah. Scared I'll get a ticket."

Notice how entrenched this pattern of words is in our daily conversation? "Scared I will get [consequence]." The word "scared" is the Freudian slip. A mistake in speech that reveals one's true subconscious desires. Seriously, despite all the love for positive thinking, have you ever heard anyone do the positive and say, "I'm putting money in the meter so that City Hall can continue to pay its workers and the city will be kept neat and tidy"?

I am guilty of this too but thankfully not everything I do is rooted in fear (I think.) For example, my curiosity about space exploration. I just happen to think its a blast to explore the universe. Its like going to the zoo. Okay maybe there is a bit of averseness, that I see a dying planet as a reason to begin space exploration. But that's not gonna happen in my lifetime so as of now, I'm driven more by the thrill of discovery than anything.

My point is this. There's a practical side to being aware how much of what we do is rooted in fear and how much of it isn't. If we are to lead fearless lives, it is worthwhile to recognize each subtle fear, render it harmless by learning not to be afraid of that fear and in time, remove the word "scared" from our vocabulary.

I am assuming that to live positively is to live fearlessly because to be scared of this and that, even subconsciously, is anything but positive.