Today is National Face Your Fears Day.  I really like this one.  It’s the opposite of the old maxim, “Don’t look back, something may be gaining on you.”  I prefer to know what it is I’m running from.

Facing one’s fears is a perennial subject in children’s literature.  Childhood is supposed to be a marvelous time of freedom and exploration, but anyone who hasn’t blocked off his or her childhood memories completely knows this isn’t even close to the truth.  Even under the best of circumstances, children live in a  world peopled with incomprehensible giants and surrounded by all sorts of grist for their fear mill.

What were you afraid of as a child?  A monster under the bed or in the closet?  Spiders? Snakes?  Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

I had a veritable jungle that I had to maneuver my way through every day.  There was a tiger outside the bathroom window that would jump in and eat me if I closed the bathroom door all the way.  There was a gorilla outside my bedroom window that used to stand and look in at me.  I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but I knew it wasn’t good.  If I kept the filmy inner curtains closed, though, he couldn’t get in.   There was an alligator under my bed, so I had to get a running start and leap into bed every night lest he bite off my toes.  When I went out at night with a big pipe wrench to turn the antenna on the TV (if it was turned one way,  it picked up Colorado Springs stations, turned the other way, it picked up Denver stations),  I sang “This little light of mine” all the way around the house and back so the bears wouldn’t get me.

Compared to the kinds of threats far too many children have to contend with–war, starvation, abuse of all kinds, homelessness, abandonment–my menagerie of fears seems rather silly, I know.  Well, except the bears.  We lived in the mountains and there really were bears in the nearby woods.  But, to me, all these threats were as real as real can be, and I had to come up with a strategy to deal with each one.

Nowadays, my fears take other forms.   They mostly revolve around being vulnerable and/or forgotten.  Poverty, illness, old age, loneliness.   These are the monsters in my closet now.

It’s all right, though.  My childhood experiences with fear taught me what to do.  Face my fears.  Name each one and devise a strategy for coping with it.  Love, gratitude, courage, wisdom, reaching out to others, accepting help when I need it.  These are the best defenses I have for dealing with my current crop of fears.

Of course, a bit of singing in the dark doesn’t hurt, either.  It still keeps the bears away.