A prostate cancer diagnosis arrives on the street corner outside a grocery store. Me and my wife were walking outside. My urologist called. I knew it in the first second.
In the months that followed, I noticed something that no amount of coaching training had adequately prepared me for. Fear did not wait to be invited. It immediately moved and began to decorate the place. A future emerged, fully formed, complete with the worst possible ending, and it seemed more real than anything my rational mind could have created on the other side.
I spent thirteen years teaching people to be with themselves in the midst of uncertainty. This year I found out how much I still have to learn.
Two futures are always available
Here’s something most people don’t notice when fear strikes: It doesn’t just make you anxious. This makes you a creator.
Fear is a master architect. If given space, it will create a whole future for you. Advances in diagnosis. Treatment fails. The life you were becomes your life. It elaborates this future overnight and asks you to move into today.
What I slowly realized this year is that desire is also a creator. It creates a different future, with different rooms and different lights. But it won’t make it unless you give it the same air-time.
Most people, when something terrible happens, do not know that they have a choice between two futures. They assume that a fear-made one is realistic, and a wish-made one is a wishful thinking. That is the fear.
What does the future of fear look like?
If you’ve ever woken up at 3 a.m. after bad news, you’ll recognize it. The mind does not wander. It constitutes It’s replay, disaster, time travel. It creates the worst version of next year and tells you to start grieving now.
In the consulting room, I was composed. I can discuss pathology reports, weigh treatment options, ask the right questions. The man who does that and the man who couldn’t sleep are the same man.
What scares you when there is no container is to run things from the basement. It doesn’t always scream. Mine fell silent. Withdrawing, pulling away from the people I need most, spending increasing amounts of time alone. It took me a while to recognize this pattern of fear working underground.
The first step is simply naming what is creating the fear. It does not fight. Not evicting. Just looking at the architecture makes it clear: this is the future of fear, not mine.
What creates desire instead
Desire, I mean here, not optimism. This is not positive thinking, and it is not an instruction to look on the bright side. It’s something quieter and more durable.
Desire is the face.
When the diagnosis came, it begged a question I’d been harboring for years: If not now, then when? Not in the motivational sense. In a practical one. I’ve wanted to cook properly for years. I wanted to rebuild my body for years. I wanted to give some things the attention they deserved, and I held back.
The diagnosis didn’t give me those things. It removed my excuses for not starting.
Desire needs an anchor. Certain things in the future, heavy enough to hold. For me, it’s turning fifty next year in the best shape of my life. Not as a performance. As a guide. A way to walk towards life when fear tries to give me another future.
daily habits
This is not a decision you make once. It’s a decision you make every morning, and some mornings are harder than others.
There will always be elements to work with fear. A consultant appointment, a scan result, a sleepless night, and suddenly the fear-made future comes alive again and the wish-made person feels thin. This is normal. Practice does not make fear disappear. Noticing which future you are currently living in and choosing again.
Three things help:
Name the future you are in. When the spiral begins, the question is “How do I stop it?” It is: “Whose future am I creating now?” Fear or me? Just naming creates a little distance.
Give fear a seat, not a head seat. Fear refuses to leave you. It goes into the basement and runs things through wires. Stay in the room. It cannot run meetings.
Return to anchor. Come back specifically to whatever created desire for you, a version of your life that you actually want. Not in the abstract. The detail is what holds it back.
None of this daunted me. Some days I’m still scared, still sitting around with difficult decisions I haven’t made yet. But the choice is there every morning.
Fear will always build you a future. The question is whether you allow only one on offer.
If you’re navigating something difficult and want to think it through, you can learn more about working with me here nibana.life.
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This post was Previously published in Nibbana.
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