“It’s alright to be scared, but don’t let that fear overpower and control you”
Winter of 2017, when all of good American television shows were on their summer break, I found myself scrolling through Netflix. For months, a show called “The Good Place” kept coming up in my suggested items. After reading the description, and knowing the way my brain operated, I decided that a show about the afterlife was potentially not the best choice for someone with a serious fear of death. But there was nothing else that even remotely appealed to me on this night, so I clicked play and settled into the couch with a blanket and way too much chocolate. Over the span of the next week, I binge watched my way through two full seasons! I became so engrossed with the storyline that I just couldn’t stop. I would watch episodes in the morning, at night and while getting ready for work. It consumed my life for that short period, and when I finally finished, I went back and watched the whole thing again. I am now part way through the 4th (and final :’( ) season of this show, and am loving every second of it.
What I wanted to talk about today, however, was not my love for what might just be one of the silliest and yet one of the best television shows at the moment. I wanted to talk about the unusual sense of calm this show gave me. Going into the show, I expected it to trigger a whole heap of problems inside my brain causing me to switch it off almost immediately after starting it. Instead, I found a place where I could rationalise my thoughts, a place that provided some humour in such a dark and taboo topic of death and the afterlife. I think a large part of the calm I found from this show came from the character Chidi Anagonye. Chidi is the physical embodiment of my innermost thoughts on any given day, he is a complete mess who is just desperately trying to make sense of the world – I think this is really something many of us can relate to, specifically people around my age in the world we live in today.
While Chidi may be one big chilli pot full of uncontrollable emotions and indecision, he is so much more than that. Chidi spent his entire life in search of fundamental truths about the universe. He has dedicated his entire life to examining the reasons people do good things and ensuring that he is the best possible version of himself (even if he isn’t always sure of it).
My interaction with this character, in a show that I enjoyed so much, encouraged my love for philosophical writings. I am not going to bore anyone with the details of all of this, but there is something about philosophy that I find incredibly calming. The ability to attempt to understand one’s life, death and existence and the reasons behind each, eliminates the unknown. It gives your mind the power to think for itself, to come up with your own ideas or to investigate the ideas of others. It allowed me to feel a sense of control over my own life rather than feeling like simply a passenger on a ride, just waiting for it to be over.
I don’t want to pretend that one TV Show has healed all my anxiety and has made me a mentally healthy and functioning member of society - because absolutely none of that is true. I find peace in so many things, this just happens to be one I have decided to talk openly about. I also have so many other things that cause me so much unneeded stress that they can turn the best day into an absolute nightmare. There is no quick fix for anxiety and I am not claiming to have found it. My point, however, is to take a jump into the deep end when faced with the reality of the things that scare us most. There is a line from the P!nk Song “Glitter in the air” that says: “Have you ever looked fear in the face and said, I just don’t care”. This line always resonated with me. I play this song during the take off of every flight I go on, timing it perfectly to have that line playing just as the wheels leave the ground. Fear is such a powerfully destructive thing. We are blessed with such a short amount of time here on earth and we spend so much of it dwelling on what might go wrong. But a life lived in bubble wrap is not a life lived at all. What is the point of living this life if we never see or do anything, if we let insignificant fears dictate the way we live? I am terrified of death to the point that the thought of my own mortality and the mortality of those I love has kept me awake at night. It has caused me to do some completely crazy things, but what I will not let it do is win. I will not let it stop me from living while I am still alive. The one good thing this fear has gifted me with, is the ability to see opportunities for what they are, blessings that do not stick around forever- you have to cling on to them while they are still available to hold. The same goes for the people you love, you can’t focus on what might happen to them in the future because then, when the inevitable happens, you will spend every minute wishing you had taken advantage of the time you had.
There is no handbook to life, no fairy godmother that fixes all your problems, it is up to you (and trained professionals) to work through them. The important thing is to jump into the things that scare you. I was scared to start watching a show that was specifically about the one thing I feared the most, and, in the end, I found something that really put it all into perspective. So whatever you are afraid of, go ahead and do it - or at the very least, indulge yourself in the topic. You might find that is isn’t so bad after all or you may just find something that helps you to be at peace with it. And, if you, like me and so many others, are afraid of dying, that is OK!! It is perfectly normal to be afraid of the unknown. But there is so much more ahead for all of us before we get there. Be afraid of the unknown, but don’t let it stop you from experiencing all that is in front of you now. We can’t stop death, but we can change the way we feel about it when it comes around.
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