EMOTION: Honest in BookThree: Flight Log 2016

I have the desire to speak about my truly greatest fears but, indulge me for a bit, because I want to share a story about the first time I ever divulged this.

I grew up in a loving but fairly strict household. I kid you not, once when I was 17… my parents grounded me because I left the house without saying goodbye to them. I was going to a movie (that they knew about); I had to be there at a certain time (obvious); and a friend was picking me up. But… since I had not said Goodbye to them… I was grounded when I came home.
That sense of strict rule-following applied to most social interactions for my parents. No matter the reason, cause, or surrounding information… I was not ever allowed to do anything over night that involved both genders. Typically, not a problem… but it did become a problem for certain Theater Events. You see… small theater troupes travel. AND they need to bond. The Mime/Improv troupe I was in tended to do this kind of thing often because (1) we were a paid troupe; (2) when doing the shows we were, you needed to trust your colleagues implicitly. However, I was never allowed to attend any of the bonding activities because Boy/Girl overnight issues. UNTIL my senior year of High School. I still was not allowed to stay. If I didn’t report home by midnight, it was my ass. But at least this time I was allowed to hang out with the troupe until midnight.

As it was my first (and inevitably last) bonding experience with the troupe, I was placed with the new recruits. New Recruits were required to participate in the deeper “Getting to Know You” games… like full theatrical background, trust falls, and The Honest Truth game. The Honest Truth Game was built to learn the deepest elements of each other… to discover what improv topics would work best, might be harmful or upsetting, just really form a bond.
My question was… What is Your Greatest Fear. The questions weren’t random and, while I was surprised at the question, it made sense. I’d had more acting experience than everyone in the troupe… I was “theatrically fearless” but that doesn’t mean I was without fear. So I gave a lot of consideration to the question before answering. It was the first time that I ever truly considered and discovered what my ultimate greatest fear is. The answer I give here isn’t verbatim but it is a close approximation:

Typically, I’d answer that my greatest fear is poverty. The idea of not being able to afford a place to live or food to eat… worse, the idea of bringing a wife or kids into poverty… that terrifies me in some ways and would have been my answer to anyone else. But it isn’t honestly my ultimate greatest fear. It certainly is up there but there’s something bigger. Much bigger. Considerably more abstract, though, if I’m being reasonable. My greatest fear is that my life will amount to nothing. I’ve spent so much time trying to be something… anything some days. But… what if life, my life, has no meaning? The very idea that my life might be without value… that after everything is said and done, I’ll not have had any purpose… that takes fear to a different level. That is the kind of fear that creates a frozen pit in my stomach that hollows me out and swallows me whole. Just thinking about it chokes me with fear.

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Of course all of that is still true. Poverty scares me but the profound dread comes from the possibility that life has no meaning and I’ll never amount to anything. These fears particularly are very powerful these days. The job search by its very nature is a terrible mutant hybrid of my greatest fears… poverty and purposelessness.

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Last updated January 30, 2016