The Canine Guru’s Guide to Surviving Fear

Gurus come in all shapes and species, and this week I am going to introduce you to three of them: a dog, an alcoholic aunt and a cancer survivor. An unlikely trio, for sure, but they each have a thing or two to tell us about facing up to that snot-nosed bully of an emotion: Fear.

Fear first crossed my path when I was eight years old. I pressed my palms to the window of a dormitory filled with ten equally terrified girls, while Fear put me in a head lock and together we watched my mother practically run to her Volvo. I laughed at it at university, when, standing in the queue of  a 24hr garage, arms filled with snacks, my first (and only) LSD tab kicked in, revealing how handsome my boyfriend was while his face melted away. I smiled blissfully back at it when the first labour pangs of a home-birth turned into pethidine party in a corridor of a wonderful London hospital. I even stared it down when my bladder dropped out of my vagina after my second child. Too much? Sorry. But seriously Fear, I’m a woman, you’ll have to do better than that. 

Then came the End of The World. How do you grapple with that bastard? He’s Fear’s ultimate Henchmen: no neck, bulging biceps and a permanent moronic look on his face.

Smashing up the place, he emerged on the scene twenty or so years ago, and we are all desperately trying to ignore him as he hurls pandemics, ‘Zombie’ wildfires in the Arctic, and furious weather our way. Sometimes you can drown him out with reusable coffee cups, going on a march, picking up the Ignorant’s rubbish, buying Jane Fonda’s new book or posting pictures of the handfuls of vegetables you’ve successfully grown in pots or allotments, but he’s getting louder each day: snowing in August, drivelling from an entitled orange mouth and taking over Radio 4.  

I can’t be the only one who turns on The Today Programme (because ignorance is worse than depression) and within five minutes regrets it. What a shocker, recently it was the revelation that discarded disposable face masks have created a plastic pollution crisis. ‘More masks than jellyfish’ quotes The Guardian. The masks have a life span of four hundred and fifty years. So, long after the Singularity takes place and technology has made the logical calculation to rid the planet of us parasites, that little mask, worn to protect us today, will still be damaging the environment. Statistics like, ‘Thirteen million tons of plastic waste goes into the oceans each year’, makes me so furious that even Fear skulks out for a walk until I calm down. But he always brings his big ass back and makes himself comfortable – grunting, scratching his bald head and biting his fingernails.

Like all bullies, Fear is insecure and needs the constant drip-feed of our anxieties in order to exist. So, we sustain him by making depressing films and TV shows, by creating apocryphal computer games and writing novels set in a dystopian nightmare. Are you feeling blue? Why not lose yourself in a story about dehumanisation and AI rebellion, watch 24hr news so you can stay up to date with crises that you can do absolutely nothing about, read the back of your son’s latest book. “In a world, where humans have no hope of survival unless they find another planet to inhabit, the engines will become gods.” Bring the joy.  

I’m O.K. with this end of life party horror, but what about our children? How are they meant to navigate it without reaching for antidepressants? We have to give them hope. For a brief and lucky moment, (given that I am forty-seven and most of my friends are attending funerals), I remember that I am still someone’s child too. I call him for a little reassurance.

“The Mayans predicted the end of the world. Don’t worry about climate change, that’s just the warm-up act (pardon the pun). Wait until the asteroid hits. We’re all going to die without warning, like the dinosaurs. You better just hope you’re near the impact site, otherwise it will be months of tsunamis and starvation. Just enjoy your life. You worry too much.” 

“Er, thanks, Dad. Did the Mayans say when the world would come to an end?”

“2012.”

“Well that’s –” 

“Or was it 2021?”

“Good talk.”

“Always. Don’t leave it a week to call again though, you never know when we all might be dead.”

I couldn’t pass on the Mayan consolation to my children. I had to come up with a better response. Lying in bed at night, wondering how to raise them with some optimism amidst all this doom, I remembered a truly accidental guru. 

A Chinese restaurant, circa 2009, sitting opposite a (surprisingly wise) alcoholic aunt, her forefinger wagging so close to my face I worried she might be about to pick my nose, she told me that, “Fear is: Future, Events, Assumed, Real.” Then she slid off her chair. The waiter, who had been eyeing the crockery as she gesticulated, had his fear realised when she took the tablecloth with her. From the floor she continued to lecture (the entire restaurant). 

“Fear is simply a construct, man-made, a nonsense. You have to learn to turn off your limbic brain. I know I have. Pass down my glass would you, darling.” 

Her brain may be fermented but she was right, fear is simply the future. It doesn’t exist. Fear cannot be. It is something that hasn’t come, will never come, but we convince ourselves it will, we think, maybe, possibly, that we know the form the future will take, but we don’t. If something is only possible then there is hope for other outcomes, other futures. We can slow down climate change, we can create a vaccine, we can become a kinder species and vote out narcissists from high office. 

As I write, my Fear looks a little vulnerable. His shoulders sink as I scour the internet for stories of possibility (of which there are many). He gets a little smaller at the breakfast table when the kids mention that they want to become scientists and create algae-based bags. 

“But ones that look dope on TikTok.”

This is all very uplifting and freeing, until you turn on the goddamn radio again, and are reminded that everything is chaos. You can control absolutely nothing. Fear rolls its shoulders, punches the air and sneers.

I am ashamed to admit that I was moaning about this to my friend, Sarah, who was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and has since bravely gone through the most harrowing treatment to come out the other side.

She has stood up to Fear and made it her bitch. I wanted to know, how, as a mother, she was able to cope, especially in this time of Covid-19. She said that when she was diagnosed and she heard the words, “not A DEATH SENTENCE,” she had an out of body experience, she was tackled by Fear and suffered from disassociation. The worst Fear was of telling her children that she had been diagnosed. And then she realised she had to embrace the emotion, or it would get her before the cancer could. “I can’t die,” she thought. “They need me. Living is my only option.” 

Asked how she copes with Fear now, she just smiles in that way she always does, a knowing, half amused consideration of my naivety, “Darling, you have to just learn to live with it.” But how? How do you fight Fear. She looked at me like a female Yoda and said, “By supporting each other.”

So far, we have telling ourselves it isn’t real, (head in the sand…my preferred philosophical option) or realising it is real and embracing it. But there must be a third way.

I turn to Inca…

…the snoring, original guru, who has been completely useless on the subject of Fear because he feels none, based on his inability to experience time. But wait, what is this, a strange reaction to random feathers? Where this comes from, I do not know, but Inca has developed and irrational fear of all things Avian. This is not a good thing in a town populated by seagulls. They appear to terrify him. It doesn’t matter how big or small, if a feather lands on the ground he loses all canine composure. I have observed how the hound copes with this Fear, and it is somewhat remarkable. First, he barks furiously, just so the feather knows he is not playing. Then after much hopping up and down, he charges and eats it. He eats the things that scare him. 

Clever dog. I am not advocating road-kill consumption (although I won’t be surprised if one of my son’s computer games offers that as an option soon) or cooking your boss, but I love his attitude. He confronts what scares him and then chews the bastard up. 

We should all do that. Instead of cowering from our Fear, we should pounce and take a bite. When it comes to saving the planet and our health, we can do our bit by recycling, using washable masks (unless in a hospital environment, of course) and helping those in need, but we can also stop feeding Fear by staying informed, not saturated. My teenage daughter reaches for her phone first thing in the morning and reads about the imminent demise of the human race. Every day. We need to not allow ourselves, or our kids become saturated by this relentless feed of depressing info. Let’s turn our phones off. Let’s not engage in the misery…just some of the time. I’m not suggesting we ignore reality, but there is hope out there and in the words of my favourite guru, Gil Scott Heron, “Five in Five will tell you it’s hopeless out there on the avenue, but if they really knew the truth, why would they tell you?”

Maybe, alongside activism and ‘doing our bit’, we could start Fright Clubs, where we meet on beaches or in parks and rage at the things that frighten us. No more passive self-harming, starvation, alcoholism, ameliorating addictions of all kinds – let’s just start yelling and running into cold water, even in winter. 

Who’s with me?