I am not afraid of anything
I am not afraid of anything
We say one thing, and feel another. How important do you find talking about things — does it feel like you’re exposing yourself and accepting your vulnerabilities?
In one of those very early-in-the-dating-period soul-searching long chats Irene and I had, she revealed she had no fears. From a place of visceral intuition, I dared to make a very risky list of what I thought she might have fears of.
It was one of those momentous talks, hinging on us going forward as a couple. More than eleven years later, we still talk about it and remember it. Not what we talked about — but that inconceivable something which floated in the air during it. In fact I’m unable to repeat the improvised list of fears I poured out at the time: I simply don’t remember it.
Why does it feel like it was such a milestone in our relationship then? Looking back, I’d say it was how it pushed us into positions of vulnerability, intimacy and an openness to new possibilities.
There I was, on the verge of ridicule, making affirmations and speaking bluntly and with conviction about someone who I had only known for days, really.
And there she was, face to face with a guy only she was only recently getting to know, who was contradicting what she had said: “You’re right,” she admitted eventually, as those fears seem to resonate somewhere inside her. “I do have a lot of fears”.
An exercise, another chat
I remembered this chat a few days ago. I was getting lunch ready. A friend was at the kitchen table, and he opened up a piece of paper lying there. “Draw something which scares you”, it said on my five-year-old son’s homework from school.
“Have you seen this? It’s not cool, no?” said my friend, in a mocking and disapproving tone at the task.
At any other moment of my life up until recently, I would have taken this same tone up with a false complicity, along the lines of: “I know, see? Now they’re breaking our balls about that… It’s only natural that children turn out to be wimps afterwards…” These were the kind of things I’d come up with to seal the hunt for approval.
Instead I said, yes, I agreed with the task and it seemed like a good one to me, since children my eldest son’s age are starting to identify and discern their emotions, which is a way of learning to know yourself.
My friend insisted. “It’s a double-edged sword; it’s giving a lot of information”. A child could end up feeling more vulnerable doing this kind of work, even more so given that they are already quite vulnerable at the age of five.
He singled me out later again, implying I was naive, ending on an ironic note and a drum roll: “Plus, talking never helped anyone, right?”
Of course it is important to talk about your fears. It’s a way of trying to overcome them, or at least, to learn to live with them. Talking can help alleviate and lighten the load which we can sometimes feel we are carrying.
I think it’s crucial that children, especially boys, learn to express their fears, emotions, feelings, tenderness and doubts. Speaking about such things helps to bridge that divide when it’s hard to name what we don’t really understand. “The limits of my language are the limits of the world”, as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said.
My friend tried to justify himself: “Stop, stop — I am not talking about this macho stupidity of men not talking, you know, Talking helps, but not because you’re told it’s what you have to do. People know for themselves what they have to do”
There are many studies about how men relate to fear. This topic is often subject to stereotypes which can indicate, for example, that fear is not socially appropriate behavior for a man. This emotion tends to be attributed more to girls than boys, as pointed out in “Fear, the last refuge of the hegemonic masculinity model”, a Spanish-language paper published by two Mexican universities about firefighter men: “It is possible that men prefer not to express their fear or talk about it because they learn early on that it is not consistent with what is expected from their ascribed gender roles”.
…
My friend is an intelligent adult, who is also insightful and intuitive. We carried on talking, between jokes and jests. We agreed on the fact that no one needs to tell a person what they have to do.
I did however make a case for the fact that men, in particular, need more safe spaces to be able to talk, because telling our stories is so important. It’s an exercise in breaking our hard shells. It is also an invitation to listen to other points of view, and accept that we can’t always fly solo.
And then he asked: “All right, then. So, what are your fears?”
My big fear
The fear of something happening to my children has pretty much eclipsed any other fears I had over the past five years.
I was also affected by two tough, raw newsletters I had read. One of them is The Red Hand Files, in which Australian musician Nick Cave replies to reader letters. One reader wrote about how his “beautiful 16 year old” had died by suicide:
“[He] was contacted online by what he believed was a girl he knew. He was extorted and then panicked, hanging himself…He was [a] private person and hated being the centre of attention. His world would have crashed around him at the thought of sexual pictures with his peer group. Our hearts are broken, literally agony.”
Cave has lost two of his sons in the last few years, and his mother. I’d say Cave knows what it means to “be confronted with the impossibility of a future life and the feeling that things will never be bearable again”.
In
, writes in a (subscriber-only) post about the death of children, which his readers tend to write to him about too (and which leaves him unsure of how to respond). Amongst other things, Maguire says: “Grief is another item on the long list of ‘things men don't talk about’”.…
I hadn’t quite convinced my friend, who said he was talking about fears you could intervene more in — such as the fear of heights or flying.
Irene jumped into the conversation here and raised that old story of ours, of when we met, and spoke about our fears — some of which she reshared. Why was it so natural for her as a woman to speak about things which it takes us a while to debate whether it even makes sense discussing them?
Then I spoke about how I used to be afraid of the dark as a child. Just then Lorenzo approached the table, and without having been asked, offered: “I am not scared of anything”.
I still wonder why my eldest son responded this way. Haven’t I told him a hundred times that I worry something will happen to him, and that’s why I am the worrywart who constantly tells him that he absolutely has to look carefully before crossing the road? Where does this insistence of having no fear come from, when I can name five of his fears off the top of my head?
Emotionally mutilated
A couple of years ago the 29th edition of the Barcelona Erotic Show was promoted in an advert criticizing “fragile masculinity”.
Cut the voiceover, deep and low pitched: “How many times have you thought you weren’t big enough? When was the last time that you cried in public? How many times have you seen your father cry?” In this edition of the erotic convention, the organizers made it clear that they welcome all kinds of men who didn’t embody the traditional masculine ideal.
Two years ago, I attended a university diploma focused on masculinities, and one of the classes was taught by Matías de Stéfano Barbero. In my notes from his class, I read that being open to vulnerability allows us to build connections, to let us be affected by others, and to create community. De Stéfano Barbero highlighted the importance of that uncertainty that men have, of opening up to another.
De Stéfano Barbero cited the writer bell hooks, who says that the fear of adults creates emotional mutilation.
The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.
– from The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004), as quoted in The Guardian.
I think of the fears that we all somewhat consciously share — including the fear of speaking about fears. It’s about how we try to ensure our children don’t suffer in a world which can be cruel by educating them to cancel part of that emotional development of theirs. We end up with adults who are emotionally crippled, as hooks put it.
In that course, De Stéfano Barbero said that women were more open to being vulnerable, while men would stay silent about situations where they had experienced violence. How many men do we know who have told us that they have been abused? A woman will always be more likely to share it.
“Showing that you have suffered violence is a sign of vulnerability for a man,” said De Stéfano Barbero. “Exposing yourself is against the system, and it is not easy, because recriminations follow.” It’s a way, said the professor, of “becoming less of a ‘man’ and becoming an object of ridicule, excluded from the club of men”.
Getting to understand my fears
I don’t actually know if I even convinced myself with what I told my friend about my fears. It’s not that I am not sure about what I said — it’s that it feels incomplete. And that puts a greater fear in a largely external part of me (what will happen to my sons), and to a great extent it puts it outside of my control (which is what my friend was rightly pointing out).
How will I make my kids learn the value of speaking about their fears, speaking about anything? What is the best way to teach them about emotions?
I’ll start by being open about what I fear the next time a friend asks. I’ll find the safe spaces I need to speak openly with others — with other men, in particular — about what I worry about now. That can be anything from not enjoying my life in the best way, to never being able to finish personal projects, or not taking the best decisions (for myself, for my children, for my wife), and even about the fear I’ll never run again because of the pain in my foot, or the fear my relationship will end.
Being aware of our own vulnerabilities is not a sign of weakness — it’s what makes us human. It’s a step towards overcoming that which can overcome us. It can be an equalizer, and help us be more empathetic towards others.
I hope that making all of these efforts will lead me to a place where, next time, neither of my sons will feel that they had to show off by saying, “I’m not afraid of anything”.
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Nacho
🙏 Many thanks to Worldcrunch for translating and editing this newsletter.