Gosh, that's a difficult question...
How does fear affect life?
I think we all carry different fears inside us
and it's how we react to those fears.
Fear can be our best friend
because it's the things we fear, I learnt,
that teach us where we've gone wrong
or where we need to adjust our lives.
Life is a journey.
And of course there are going to be
broken areas of that journey.
Failure is something that we need to get to grips with.
Because if we were too scared to fail,
we wouldn't even attempt anything.
We wouldn't even be brave or have the courage
to live out this life.
One of my recurring nightmares as a young adult
that I couldn't see where I was going.
I was always lost because my eyelids were stuck down
and all I could see was the pavement and my feet.
My reaction to my fears was actually not to acknowledge them.
When I look back I realise
I pushed them aside and I just got on with things
and did what I could with my life
given my blindness as to what was really going on in me.
It wasn't until my mid 60's
that I realised I had an awful lot to deal with.
I was aware of a big black hole in the middle of me.
I realised I'd become a person I didn't like at all...
I wasn't nice...
and no wonder I felt alone and unloved.
I felt that I had mishandled my life
and myself and my relationships.
And I needed to change, I needed to change.
Struggles in life... they are part of our journey.
Relationships are full of complexity and theres two sides to it...
You could say she failed at bringing up her family,
she had a broken marriage.
You can heap it up and heap it up,
and there can be shame and all those things.
And on the other side of it you've got this amazing journey...
you're living it out and you're a survivor.
You're carrying through it all and
which is the more valuable, which is more purposeful.
And so I think that you become a better person
through your failures.
The idea is to take that failure and to use it
to work with in your life.
Painting is a simile for life.
Because if you go to it and you are afraid, it doesn't happen...
it won't work, it won't work for you.
You are blocked from taking the right path.
Until you unblock that... whatever it is,
wherever you come from, whatever your background...
you need to find out who you are
and why you are the way you are.
All this fear I had, had to come out.
And I had to acknowledge what I'd done and who I'd done it to,
and that unless I could change
my life wouldn't be worth living.
It was a very, very emotional and difficult thing for me to realise.
At the time of darkness and being in that dark place
you would not know the potential.
You wouldn't know the power that you have.
And it is only in retrospect
that the value of that experience becomes so real.
Failure is like the equivalent of working with clay...
it's stuff that you work with,
it's stuff that you grow with.
We work through our failures, we survive,
but something new comes out of it.
Letting it happen... it's an opportunity for change.
I often look back and think
why didn't this happen sooner?
Why did I have to wait till I was 65 to discover it?
I think the answer has to be that we make our own lives.
And I took so many wrong turnings.
And when we take a wrong turning
we have to wait till we find the right road.
And it took me to 65.
Hopefully it'll take other people much less.
But it's definately something to confront
no matter what age you are.
Here's a quote by Alberto Giacometti:
'The more you fail, the more you succeed.
It is only when everything is lost
and instead of giving up, you go on,
that you experience the momentary prospect
of some slight progress.
Suddenly you have the feeling
be it an illusion or not,
that something new has opened up.'
From something that is broken and in pieces
is the great opportunity for something completely different,
something new to come.
Keep moving from a place of failure or brokenness
to be able to find that something new.
And embrace it.
If I could go back, I would.
But only to right a few wrongs
and hopefully act with my eyes open
instead of closed.
I suppose it's about fulfilling oneself.
It sounds a little bit mushy...
but for the first time in my life, I'm fulfilled.
I don't have a black hole in me anymore
and compared to what I was
I think I am at peace.
And the world around me couldn't be more beautiful.
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