Last Sunday night, I got home late, and worried when I did not see Loki waiting for me at the door. As I walked up the stairs, I worried that he might somehow be gone, and considered, as an exercise, what might be the worst possible thing that could happen. Flipping through the rolodex of my fears, I thought the worse possible thing that could happen would be walking down into the basement and finding him being eaten by some grotesque vampire. I pleaded with the voice in my head I ascribe generally to God, claiming that I had not been properly prepared to confront this fear, that I had had no training. My God voice explained that the only way to overcome those worst fears was to confront them, to experience them. I did not know how I might react, faced with this, but knew that I must simply go inside and see.
Loki was outside on the back deck. I remembered at some point during the day leaving the door open for Snack to go out, and I did not see that Loki was out when I closed the door.
As I let him in, I saw something move through my periphery - what I thought at first was a bird, until it arched slowly and headed my way, a large bat, blinded, confused by the lights in the house. Loki and Snack observed but seemed uninterested. I was panicked for a moment, until I realized the irony of this, my ram, spared the sacrifice and horror of Loki's sacrifice.
I closed the bedroom door, opened the back window and back door and began turning on the lights in the front of the house, doing corner sweeps as I entered each room, stepping out of the way of the bat, clapping my hands to make myself more visible to the bat's navigation gear.
Experiencing and owning that fear humbled me, but I learned not to be ruled by fear. I set boundaries for how prepared I was - not allowing it in the bedroom, for example, and channeled the release, by first understanding where the fear was coming from, and how disoriented and afraid my fear was of me. Batting the bat away, or simply waiting for it to magically disappear, would have done nothing to alleviate the situation for either of us. The bat would have suffered needlessly, and I would have continued my shameful avoidance. Even after taking the dogs for a walk, I realized that I could have my room to sleep in, even if the bat were still in the house when I returned.
I don't believe I will ever surround myself with bats, as some complete recuperation, a Hollywood psychodynamism, but I am at greater peace with bats, and with fear. Most importantly, I know that the first step towards overcoming fear is understanding the motives of the object of my horror. Sometimes the object of fear will have me as a target, in which case my options are more clearly defined, but with no less empathy. Most times, that object is operating from an even more raw instictive fear than I. In those cases, I can demonstrate compassion. The trick of achieving true ahisma, agape is to demonstrate compassion even in channeling the fear-inspiring energy of that which does wish to do me harm, either physically or emotionally, removing the weapon from both of us simultaneously.
Comments