Spiders and Golf are not the same, and neither is the fear behind them both
There is no doubt about it - I cannot stand spiders. I look at them, consider them to be one of my Animal Totems (because that is what that particular fear is all about), but outside of that much, I am scared of them. Okay, maybe not all of them. Just the ones that can kill you if they happen to bite you. Me and Spiders are far-away friends, to say the very least.
Then there is that fear that I have which is produced in me when I think about the one sport that I totally understand, totally am "into," and can be considered as my most favorite sport of all - the Game of Golf. Yes. Me. I Love Golf. I always have. I lived at a private resort for years, and there was a golf course - 27 hole Ted Robinson course even, gorgeous in every way that a golf course in the middle of the desert could be, given the area and the amount of play it gets. I love this game. I love the pageantry. I love that you seriously have to be dressed in actual clothes that are actually beautiful to look at in terms of "sports equipment." (I am sure that I don't have to explain it...I mean really...look at how great Tiger Woods looks when he is playing a tourney, or how awesome Ricky Fowler looks...even my "anti-favorite" - Mr. Mickelson....I just love this game!) Everything about the game of Golf, from a distance, has my name and my energy written all over it.
BUT, I am scared to death to play golf. No, this doesn't mean that I will not try, because I try all the time. It means that until I can actually slam the hell out of that stupid little white ball and actually connect club head-to-ball without the ball ending up somehow behind me, I fear the game of golf. I fear it because out of everything that I am told that I am very good at, I know that this game will not be one of those things, at least not right away. Yes...stop....I know...."your fault...you lived at a golf course for almost a decade and never picked up a club as much as you should have..." Yes, I know it. I cannot make up the excuse that I was too busy teaching hula (okay, maybe I can... but still). I cannot say that I couldn't afford to learn because the golf amenities were free to residents and homeowners.
I have no excuse, at all. I cannot sit here and tell anyone that I didn't have the opportunity, or that no one wanted to play with me (...hello, Kim....shut up lol...). I have no excuse, but I have a reason, even though at this point in time I realize that really is the most ridiculous reason anyone has ever had.
The reason that I almost refused to learn to play is that there were other people there at the course, at the range, and those other people would be watching me totally suck at the game of golf. Golf requires concentration. If I am creating a new hula, I can concentrate. If I am composing a piece of writing for someone, I can concentrate. If I am doing a whole lot of other things that require concentration, I can deal with it. But when it comes to something where I am out in the open and it is something that I essentially know I can do and that I know I can do it because I was taught a whole lot of golf, I will hesitate. It is the hesitation brought about by the Ego part of me that won't allow me to drop my guard, be my silly self, and get my ass to at least the range with my golfer friends so that they and my boy can teach me better about this game I already know so very much about.
No...no no no no no no....I am a chicken turd. Not even a little one. A spider I can grab something long and skinny and poke it til it runs away. I won't look like anything more than a very chick-like chick when it comes to that stupid little 8-legged monster. But GOLF? I LOVE the game...but I am afraid to look really bad, bad enough to be distracted and keep my eyes not where they belong, which is on that stupid little white ball that, just like an actual golfer knows, can make you crazy. How silly it is for me to allow something that I do not use regularly make me afraid of it. I am afraid to look like I don't know what I am doing, even though I sort of do. I am scared that my real level of distraction and my ability to lose my concentration when it comes to things "sport" because when I was a kid, my mother sent me to hula, not sports. Hula, not softball. Hula, not soccer. Hula....and bummer, but not golf. Not even to learn with her father, a man who was a magnificent participant in the most beautiful game these eyes have even had the opportunity to NOT learn to play when the time and the everything that I needed were at my disposal.
It is not really the fear of learning as much as it is the fear of not being great a something right away. And no tsk tsking me...we all do it. All of us are afraid to find out that, based on some weird past experience with any failure at all and based on the reaction given to us by those watching, we are not as cool as we think we are, even though we indeed are that cool in reality. In reality no one who does not know us really cares about if we succeed or fail, and no one cares if we look foolish doing a thing or not unless it somehow will impact them personally. This is not my rule. This is just how it is. We cannot be perfect at everything. Some people are afraid to fall in love because of the past things that they went through in that energy in the past. Some people are scared to death of getting a promotion at work, because then they will have to live up to that promotion's expectations. Some folks are scared of letting go of something, because for some reason they might feel as though that thing has the power to make or to break them and their lives. This is not the truth.
There is no truth in not trying. Read that again. There is no truth in not trying - in not trying to get past your fears about things that are really very silly. I will say it now - I agree with anyone who would believe and have the opinion that my fear of failing at the game I love so much to watch is ridiculous. I agree that I should just get on out there and hit some of those dimpled white balls, and I agree that I should at least take my son and my friend up of their offer on some golf lessons, and I agree that there are things which are contained in the energy that is the fear that I have about looking foolish if I miss that stupid ball that anyone would be afraid of, but that there really and inherently is nothing for me to fear. The fear is ego based. It is the part of me that tells me that I am gonna look funny swinging that club, and it is the ego within me telling me that they're - whoever they are - are going to point and laugh and tell me that I swing looks like crap.
Of course it looks like crap! In fact, it is going to look like crap until I have perfected it, and I cannot perfect it if my fear of looking like it needs perfecting is so big that I cannot get past being just a spectator. And I promise you that there is one thing that I want to do, and I want to do this more than I want to do a lot of other things - that one thing is that I wanna learn to play golf, but in order to do that I have to do like I do the spiders that I am equally and justifiably afraid of -spiders, because some of them can kill a person - and poke it with a stick until it crawls away from me and stays its distance.
When we are scared to try something that we know we want to try but the fear inside of us stops us, we know that the Ego is alive and well within us enough to stop us from enjoying what it is that we so dearly want. As I mentioned already, I want to play golf. I have always wanted to. There are friends who ask me all the time why, if I have all this equipment, and have all these friends willing to teach me, and more, if my own son is up my okole about him teaching me while he has time to, am I still afraid?
Because....there are some things that you cannot hide behind an excuse for, such as singing way out of tune at a party because you were drunk (done it...not a problem, do it all the time), or, falling flat on your face while performing in front of a crowd in excess of 1000 people or more (again, done it...and yes, dancing hula...don't ask). Yet, those are things that a lot of people are good at and in my case at least one of those two things is the truth of me. I am not scared to screw up during a hula performance, because I have screwed up so many times over the 40 years of my life that I have danced that, to screw up is sometimes needed. But when it comes to something that I want to do but have no actual talent for it (yet)?
The only way that I am going to get past this fear of screwing up this game I love so much is to actually get out there with my boys and learn....
I plan on missing the ball at least 400 times before I give up and get tired of looking ridiculous, and that will be on the first time out and in the real.
The point is not that I love golf, or that I fear spiders, or screwing up and looking foolish.
The point is to get out there, screw up, and learn....forget about what happened in the past and how you screwed up in the past - the future is not back there and it is not even here yet! Screw up now so that you can say that at least you tried....
Again...
Get out there.
Screw up.
Learn!
Duh!
I Love You All !
ROX
@ReverendRoxie22
The Sisterhood of The Soul
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