Overcoming "Our Deepest Fear"

Week 7.

For those of you who do not teach 16 week semesters, that phrase is probably meaningless. For my students, it is the halfway point. It is that time in the semester when many of them begin to realize that they might really need to kick it into high gear in order to pass. It is the time in the semester when expectations rise and they need to reach higher than they have in order to do well.

Unfortunately many of them become afraid and feel that reaching the goal of the end of the semester is simply too difficult. It is that time in the semester that many students tend to disappear; they simply stop coming to class.

As a teacher this time of the semester is hard. I know that many of my students have difficult lives; many of them are single parents and are trying to balance the struggle to earn a living in order to provide for their children, and school which will improve the quality of life for their families. It's so hard to watch them struggle toward a goal and then disappear when that goal starts to feel impossible.

This makes me think about fear. We have all experienced fear in some way or another, it just manifests in different ways for different people. I think that sometimes, students at the community college level give up due to fear. The fear of failure... but also the fear of success.

I've been thinking about a particular passage which is often misattributed to Nelson Mandela, but it was actually written by the motivational writer and speaker Marianne Williamson, and appears in her book "A Return to Love".

Regardless of the source, the message is very powerful:

"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, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

This passage strikes me because it seems to state that each of us possesses the strength, the intellect, and the power to offer the world amazing things. That it is our responsibility to work to our full capacity and to achieve all that we are able. That when we do, others work to their top capability as well.

Think about that the next time you are facing someone who is giving up. I know that I will.