“Fear” is a funny word that society has a very interesting relationship with.

In my view, the healthiest relationship with “fear” is understanding that being afraid is a part of life. It doesn’t make you weak to admit that you’re afraid of something, even if you only admit it to yourself. I think fear is the acknowledgment that something is unknown or new to us, and we have to tread carefully when dealing with whatever that thing may be.

Some people are afraid of bees.

Some people are afraid of public speaking.

Some people are afraid of the ocean.

Some people are afraid of making a phone call to order pizza.

Fear for your safety and that of your family is what helped our ancestors survive, and the reason I’m here today typing this email you’re going to read. But fear of physical pain or death is not the only thing we should be afraid of.

I’m afraid of giving her the ick because I went to use my phone to tap to pay, and it didn’t go through the first time 🥴

Is was at that moment that my knees became weak and my palms sweaty as I looked up at the cashier…

ME: It didn’t go through 😰

CASHIER: Are you sure? 🤨

ME: Yeah 🫤

CASHIER: Try it now

ME: Now? 😬

CASHIER: Yeah

ME: It didn’t work again 🫥

CASHIER: Hold up

ME: Okay 😐

CASHIER: It should work now

ME: Are you sure? 🥺

CASHIER: Yes

ME: Super sure?

CASHIER: Yes

ME: Would you bet your firstborn’s life on it? 🫣

CASHIER: Do you want to buy the Nutella croissaint or not?

ME: Of course, I do 😶

CASHIER: Give me a second. We took too long. Okay, try it now

ME: Okay, it worked. Here’s your chocolate croi—

By that time, it was too late. She’d already walked away, texting her friend: Girl, I almost let it slide the first time it didn’t work, but then he fumbled his phone in his hands and messed it up a second time. I had to walk out immediately. 

Don’t judge me. We’ve all been there 😔

I’m afraid of dropping my keys in the sewer when I go to my favorite breakfast spot on Saturday mornings 🔑

Sometimes, I park with my driver-side door right above the sewer grate, and I don’t know if anyone else will identify with this, but I’m a mess when it comes to getting in or out of my car. No matter how hard I try to keep things simple, my pockets are always full of shit, and I can’t drive with my pockets full of shit. So I’m usually fumbling 3-5 things in my hands, making sure I don’t drop my phone, my keys, or my wallet, and that I lock the car manually because my beeper doesn’t work.

Whenever I go to reach for the keys or my wallet, I take a second, look down at the sewer grate, squeeze the object in my hands, and hold my breath until I move at least five feet away from any possible instance of dropping something in Miami sewer water.

It’s not only the fear of losing an entire day figuring out how to fix the situation but also the fear of talking to my dad on the phone and getting the typical “If you were more careful with your things and didn’t have your mind all over the place this wouldn’t happen!”

I’m afraid of forgetting my sequence in the middle of teaching a yoga class 🧘🏽‍♂️

I don’t know what it is, but sometimes my mind just goes blank. I’ll be in the middle of class, having fun, moving around, giving instructions, and trying to assist people in their poses, when all of a sudden, we reach a point where we’re starting something new, and I hold the pose for a few extra seconds. It’s not that I need to catch my breath (although that too). It’s that I’m literally thinking to myself, “FUUUUUUUUCK, what comes next?”

More experienced teachers will tell you this goes away with time, and it’s true!

In the early days, I would spend four hours the night before a class practicing a sequence to make sure I had it memorized front2back and back2front. As time has passed and my teaching has become more frequent, I don’t need to spend as much time memorizing things. You create an archive of potential journeys in your head that you can pull out of thin air at any moment. It’s a beautiful thing when you get that feeling of being more confident in something because of the work you’ve put in. But sometimes, shit just happens 😨

On that note…

I’m afraid of farting while teaching a yoga class 🙈

Most people, including teachers, will tell you it’s not a big deal and that you should just laugh it off. And that’s true.

But also, it’s not true at all.

It’s one thing for a stunningly gorgeous girl to fart in front of you and say, “Oops! Jiji ☺️.” People shrug that shit off like it could happen to anyone. But when a dude RIPS ASS in front of a group of people?

There’s no coming back from that ⚰️

I had a buddy who was into a girl once, and he thought he really had a chance, and it turns out he did. Until one day, he and the girl were studying together in a room by themselves, and he accidentally ripped ass in front of her when it was completely silent. She never looked at him the same after that.

Not all farts are created equal.

I’m afraid of texting the wrong person because I meant to text someone else, but their name in my contacts starts with the same couple of letters, and then I say some shit they weren’t supposed to hear 🫠

It could happen to any of us.

I’m afraid of texting a work chat instead of a group chat with some shit that shouldn’t be texted in a work chat 😤

This is why I believe all work communication should happen via Slack. I hate having a group text with a client right next to the group chat with my boys or right above the chat with someone I’m romantically involved with. I’m typing quickly and texting people all day long, and tbh, I’m surprised I haven’t accidentally sent some horny shit or some dumb shit that was meant to be a joke to the wrong person.

Maybe my fear of doing it has saved me so far?

In which case, I’ll continue being afraid 👍🏽

I’m afraid of guns 🔫

Have you ever fired a gun?

Many people reading this will be like, “Of course. I love guns! Guns are awesome! Get trained and shoot guns all the time! PEW PEW!” 

Okay, whatever, congrats on that.

I’ve shot a gun twice in my life—both times at a shooting range. I’ll never forget the first time I held a gun in my hand.

I walked in, gave them my Groupon printout, handed them my driver’s license, and they handed over a gun with a full box of bullets. The weight of that weapon in my hand is something I will never forget. The feeling of knowing you have something that, with a simple movement of your finger, could change countless lives forever.

What’s stopping someone from shooting others when they find themselves with such easy access to a weapon? Nothing. That’s actually how the dude from American Sniper got killed.

But that brings me back to the idea that we’re not afraid enough of guns. I’ve listened to a podcast where the people on it said they’d rather be shot than stabbed because they have a better chance of surviving a bullet wound than a knife wound. I listened to them try to explain their reasoning for this for a good 20 minutes and still thought they were batshit crazy.

I blame The Matrix and John Wick (not you, Keanu, you didn’t write the Gun Porn movie, you merely kicked ass acting in it). In movies like that, you see people fire hundreds and thousands of bullets, and people barely get hit, but when they do, they either die quickly or shrug it off. I think it’s given Americans a false sense of security that they could either dodge a bullet or keep going after getting hit with one because it’s nbd.

If one person with a gun is dangerous, I believe an entire crowd full of people with guns, panicking, scared, and shooting in every direction is even more dangerous. No, that’s not a push to train everyone to handle guns. We don’t need to take a society that already devalues community and train them to see every single possible person around them as a threat.

Speaking of investing in our community…

I’m afraid we don’t understand what Public Service is meant to be 🚅

One of the many ways people talk against building more trains and providing options for public transportation is that many public transportation systems don’t make a profit. I’m here to let you in on a little secret….THEY’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO MAKE A PROFIT. THE PROFIT IS PEOPLE HAVING ACCESS TO TRANSPORTATION THAT DOESN’T COST THEM HUNDREDS OR THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A YEAR.

Sorry about the screaming. I get excited sometimes.

“But, David, what’s supposed to pay for the trains?”

Our fucking tax dollars. That’s what they’re for. To make things that provide a benefit for the majority of people. The government isn’t in it to make money. Not everything is about making money. I know USA has convinced you that everything must make money or it’s a failure, but not everything needs to make money.

It’s actually beneficial for an old person to walk down the block to the train and take it to their medical appointment. It’s a hell of a lot better to have that elderly person walking (something good for their health) than to have an 85-year-old who can barely see the TV unless it’s 12 inches away driving a 2,000 lb metal device at high speeds surrounded by other heavy ass metal devices and pedestrians protected by nothing but flesh and bones.

I’m afraid we only see things for the benefit it gives us and not the benefit it gives our community as a whole 🛝

This is piggybacking off the previous one.

I’m afraid of slipping and falling in the shower 🛀

Listen, I slip sometimes. I think it’s because I’m heavy on my feet. I’ve had moments where my foot slips goes an inch or two in the wrong direction, and I get that pit at the bottom of my stomach.

I’m always worried that this might be the moment I fall sideways, twist my knee, break it, hit my head on the toilet, and lie there bleeding away with no one to help me. As you get older and your body gets more delicate, you gotta be careful even with the day-to-day things.

I’m afraid that the longer we know each other, the easier it is to hurt each other 😢

This one might be super specific to me, but I feel like sometimes the most beautiful, longest relationships also have the potential for the most pain.

I’ve noticed that when you have known someone since you were young, you paint an image in your head of who this person is. But that image is just who they were at one point in time.

As the years go on, people change.

And even though we don’t always notice those changes, they still happen. I’ve been in too many conversations where myself and the people I love speak from a placement of judgment instead of understanding.

Too often, we start a conversation already convinced that we know what the other person will say, so we don’t even give them a chance to speak. We’ve already decided what we think. We’ve already decided what they think. Anything they say is just a roadblock to us getting our point across. We don’t listen to understand. We listen to respond.

Sticking to lifelong friendships…

I’m afraid we don’t know how to show love ❤️‍🩹

In these very same relationships where we already decide what the other person believes and is trying to tell us, we also treat them in a way we wouldn’t treat others we’ve known for a much shorter period of time.

I think it may be because we feel more comfortable with them, but that doesn’t give us the right to treat them with less understanding and more judgment.

I’m afraid we think people need to show us who they are on social media 📲

Not too long ago, the only way to know what someone thought about a topic was to talk to them in person or over the phone. We didn’t have the luxury of sharing our thoughts in a digital public space for everyone to see.

Today, we follow someone on Instagram, see a few of their posts, and assume we know everything about who this person is and what they stand for. What they believe in or what they don’t.

We judge someone based on a simple snapshot on a medium the people doing the judging don’t even respect in the first place. So, please, stop assuming things about people based on what they say or don’t say on their social posts. If you really want to know, you can talk to them in person. I promise you’ll get more, better info, and you’ll have an actual conversation instead of a digital shouting match to see who can be more right or prove another person more wrong.

I’m afraid that people I love and care for are scared for their own safety simply because of who they are or what they believe in 💔

I’m afraid that we approach our differences from a place of judgment instead of curiosity 👀

I’m afraid that people will continue to suffer needlessly simply because of their religion, what they look like, where they were born, where they happen to live, or any other number of things we don’t always get to choose 😕

I’m afraid that no matter how hard I try or what I do, I won’t be able to live up to everything people believe I am capable of 😔

But one thing I’m not afraid of is acknowledging fear. It doesn’t make me weak. It doesn’t make it more likely whatever I’m afraid of will happen.

That’s not how I see it.

I see it as a confrontation of reality.

I see it as the belief and awareness that no matter how we work or how much we want something, things aren’t always going to work out. And because so many things in our life will not work out, and I plan on having a long life,

I’m not afraid of failing.

I’m not afraid of trying something different when the original plan didn’t work out.

I’m not afraid of realizing I have much to learn, no matter how old I am.

I’m not afraid of having my mind changed or finding out there’s a better way.

I think if we truly live by the notion that there is always something new to learn, something to improve, something to refine, we will always be working towards a better version of ourselves. Towards creating a better world for us and the people we love 🫵🏽🫶🏽

I’m afraid of people doing too much of their own research 🤓

I could get a good look at a t-bone steak by sticking my head up a cow’s ass, but I’d rather take a butcher’s word for it 🥩