Returning to the “real world”

“When we do not understand something, we color it in fear.”

I read this quote about a month ago and it has been wandering around my mind every since. Fear has been something I have thought about a lot over the past year. I see it everywhere I look some days, even within myself. Fear is a strong motivator, sometimes in a healthy way and other times very far from it.

As I continue this journey of understanding the mind body connection, it makes so much sense to me why fear is such a strong driver of behavior. Our brain is a survival organ above all else. Yes, it helps us to communicate, comprehend and navigate our world but that always comes second to survival. Most of our energy is spent on keeping ourselves alive by means of seeking safety and avoiding pain. Our body is in on this role too. Our brain doesn’t exactly have direct contact with the world since it is safely tucked away inside our skull. Our body and our senses are what feed our brain all the information it needs to determine if we are safe or in danger at all times.

This survival drive is strong in us humans, as it is in most living beings. But us humans have gotten ourselves into a bit of a pickle these days. Or that is what it feels like to me. We have not evolved on a neurological level to actually live in the world we have created. A world filled with constant sensory overload that is incredibly confusing to our survival driven brain. We often have high demand jobs that don’t produce any tangible results beyond making numbers go up in our bank accounts. We keep ourselves constantly distracted from the present moment with all sorts of technology. Rarely do we slow down enough to let what our mind is thinking match what our body is experiencing.

All of these things and more are causing our brains to malfunction. Our brains start to perceive everything as dangerous because it cannot fully comprehend what is real and what is imagined. It struggles to differentiate between the screen and real time. It made me really uncomfortable when I first learned that our brain cannot always tell that we are not experiencing what we watch on a screen. But we’ve all felt it before; Movies have brought you to tears, made you jump out of your seat in fear, or stirred anger within. These physiological responses happen because our brain believes we are actively engaged in these moments.

The past two months, I have spent a lot of time in nature. Fortunately for my brain, many places I camp and explore lack good cell service. My phone has been on airplane mode quite often lately and it has been so helpful for me. I have told many people lately, my brain works better when I’m not on my phone or any screen for a while. We all know this, we’ve all read the research or watched the documentaries. But our addiction to sensory overload these days is a real thing.

This idea that what we don’t understand we color in fear, is what is happening to our brain. Our brain is trying to make sense of this world but at the end of the day, it doesn’t understand it. So we become filled with fear. Fear of what we see on our screens, what we hear from others, and all the other sensory information that is confusing our minds and bodies.

It is interesting to me that so many people call me brave because I camp alone so often. I understand that this fear is driven by lack of understanding. When you do not experience nature often, it becomes an unknown. Also, there are far too many narratives pushed in our society about how dangerous the wild is. Again, we fear what we do not understand. But what I am discovering is that our minds and bodies are designed to be in nature. We are nature. As much as we want to separate ourselves and think it makes our lives easier, it simply is not true.

I have caught myself recently saying a few times, “eventually, I need to return to the real world.” As if the real world, this fast paced, full of distractions, fear driven, sensory overload place, is where I am designed to live. But as I said before, my brain works better now. When I am living slower, spending more time in nature, honoring the cycles of the seasons and being far more quiet than I have ever been. This, the wild of nature around me, is the real world. This is where we are truly evolved to live.

As much as we want to think we have it all figured out, we do not. Our brains are still confused by the world we have created. This confusion drives us directly into fear. No wonder everyone I connect with is feeling stressed, burned out, frustrated and scared. We are pretending the world we have constructed is for our benefit but I see it so clearly as a zoo. These enclosures we have created for ourselves, in part feel more safe and secure, but something deep within us still knows it is not right. Seeing a bear in the zoo is nothing like seeing a bear in its natural environment.

I was so used to seeing myself in a safely constructed enclosure that I lost sight of what it felt like to be in my natural environment. After so much time sleeping outside, I get it. My brain and body function differently. I feel more whole. I have always had tiny tastes of this whenever I camped for a night or a weekend. It is what always calls me to the mountains and green spaces around me.

Living in it, for prolonged stretches, captured me in different ways. I felt the fear dissolve. I felt my brain and my body become less reactive. I absolutely get the desire to fall off the face of the earth, walk into the wild and never return. It is where we are designed to be. This “real world” that I keep saying I must return to is nothing of the sort. It is a constructed reality that is confusing our very being and stirring so much fear up within.

I wish I could say this has helped me to figure out what to do next. But honestly, this makes everything moving forward more challenging. I know that living more in tune with nature is an immense privilege for me. I understand that it is not within everyone’s grasp to walk into the woods for weeks at a time and forget about jobs, relationships and life in general. As someone said, we’ve made our bed and now we have to lie in it.

I suppose the work is to notice the fear when it rises up within. To begin to cultivate curiosity around the fear rather than let it drive you into rushed action. When we see that fear arises from a lack of understanding, we can approach it differently. We can begin to color our world in softer shades. Fear can be a positive motivator to keep us alive when the danger is real and present. But when the source of fear is an unknown or imagined threat, all we are doing is exhausting ourselves.

Next time fear catches your heart, pause first. Get curious about the why. Perhaps this world isn’t quite as full of fear as we assume, rather it is lacking understanding. Remember, we are not living in a world we are evolved to understand, give yourself some grace. And when all else fails, go outside and sit in some nature. I swear to you, it will do your mind and body so much good!