Like all artists, musicians are caught between two conflicting
fears. We're afraid no one will come to the show. And we're afraid they will.
We can't decide which is worse: failure or success.
We need an
audience, but we really want to be alone. We loath the anonymity of failure
almost as much as we fear the utter exposure of success.
If you
aspire to be anything in this life - a teacher, a butcher, a baker, a
candlestick maker, or, God forbid, a singer songwriter - you're going to have
to negotiate this paradoxical minefield. Many of us are paralyzed. We don't
take the next step because we don't want to get blown up.
But what is
it really that's holding us back?
The common
assumption is that we fear failure. We don't reach for greatness because we're
convinced we'll fall short. We don't want to look stupid. It's so much easier
to hold still, risk nothing, and nurture the illusion that we're satisfied with
our incompletion. We wear our dissatisfaction like a badge.
But there's
another, subtler fear that lurks behind the more obvious one. Fear of failure
is one thing. What about fear of success?
Marianne
Williamson, in her bestselling book A Return to Love: Reflections on the
Principles in a Course in Miracles, wrote very powerfully on this subject. This
quote has been circulating the Internet for years. It is often mistakenly
attributed to Nelson Mandela. That's because he adapted this passage for his
inauguration speech in 1994 when he was elected the first black president of
South Africa, a country painfully emerging from the mud of apartheid. Mandela had
been imprisoned by the white regime for 27 years. He had a lot of time to think
about the big questions. What holds us back? What moves us forward? How can we
heal ourselves, heal our nation, and heal the world? One can only speculate
about how this passage affected Mandela. As you read it, ask yourself, is this
about me? Williamson writes:
Our deepest fear is not that we are
inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our
light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to
be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
[...] Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened
about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you... And as we
let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do
the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically
liberates others.
Our
practiced unwillingness to cultivate our own greatness deserves deeper reflection
and contemplation than we normally allow. What if she's right? What if the
possibility of our wild success is more paralyzing than the possibility of our
utter failure? Why do we feed, day after day, on the bitter bread of our own
indifference, our own apathy, our own resentment? Why, now, have we given up?
Surely the fear of failure is an inadequate explanation.
Where did
we get the message that our greatness was threatening to others? Where did we
learn the lie that the best way to help other people feel good about themselves
was to mute our brilliance? Who told us that we did not deserve love,
prosperity, health, and joy? And why did we so readily believe them?
Somehow we
confused mastery with arrogance, creative abundance with egotism, brilliance
with narcissism. We are right to guard against arrogance, egotism, and
narcissism. But we are wrong, dead wrong, to eschew mastery, creative
abundance, and brilliance in the name of a distorted notion of humility.
On the
contrary, is it not ultimately more egotistical to hide our light for fear of
looking foolish? What are we protecting? Real humility would be to get our ego
out of the way and honor the gifts we have been so graciously given by the
all-knowing mind of the universe - to cultivate the courage and discipline to
live fully, fearlessly, and authentically, full speed ahead and damn the
torpedoes.
We stare
through the bars of our fear-wrought prison; we torture ourselves with doubt,
confusion, and false humility. But don't despair. Mandela lived in a literal
prison. He was routinely tortured. Yet he ultimately triumphed. Mandela
believed in the light, and in the power of ordinary people to be great.
By
cultivating our greatness we are better able to serve others. And then the real
miracle happens - "as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other
people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our
presence automatically liberates others." Far from intimidating others with our
light, we inspire them. Cultivating your authentic, creative, generous self is
your greatest gift to the world. In fact, it's your obligation and your duty.
Not for ego, not for glory, not for fame, and not for money. All those things
may or may not happen incidentally. They were never the goal. The real goal is
and always has been service. By cultivating your authentic, creative self you
are participating in the sustenance of the universe. And we can't do it alone.
We need as many people as possible to cultivate their own greatness. Perhaps we
are reaching the tipping point as more and more people are liberated from the
chains of limited thinking and fearful ignorance. As we awaken to our deeper
reality, others are inspired to awaken as well. We serve nothing but our own
fear-based ego by playing small. Living our dreams, dreams planted deep within
us when the dream of the universe was born, is our sacred duty and honor. Live
the life of your dreams. Risk everything. You have nothing to lose but your
fear and your egoic confusion. Trust the light. Live big. Live bright. Your
soul is crying for it. The time has passed for playing small.
Peter Bolland is a professor of philosophy and humanities at
Southwestern College and singer-songwriter-guitarist of the Coyote Problem. You
can complain to him about what you read here at peterbolland@cox.net.
www.thecoyoteproblem.com is the ethereal home of the Coyote Problem.