Kay:
Hello there Questers and welcome back. It is Thursday, December 2nd, kind of a fun numerological day today. We have 1-2-2-2-1, 1-2-2-2-1, which is kind of fun because it has the one on both ends and only twos in the middle. We will only get this here in the year 2021. So fun to get to experience this once in a — maybe twice — in a lifetime opportunity. And this is episode 479, we have an unconventional quest guide for you today, and we’re excited to share her with you. But I want to share the quote before I give you who she is, and it is this. “Everything doesn’t have to be about fear. There’s room in our line of work for hope too.” This comes from the very spunky Barbara Gordon, Batgirl.
Shi:
Oh yeah. It’s a Batgirl quote for you today on that 1-2-2-2-1 day. I can’t remember what that’s called when something’s the same forward as backward.
Kay:
Like an anagram?
Shi:
Onomatopoeia maybe is what it’s called. It’s not an anagram, but it’s… Yeah, like the word racecar is the same forwards and backward. That’s what our date here is today. But this quote from Batgirl, super fun,f and I love that she brings this forward. I guess we’re on a fear kick this week because yesterday we talked about fear with Rosa Parks and today, we’re talking about it with Batgirl, a fictional character, but a very nonfictional piece of advice here that we would all do well to take heed of.
Kay:
Well, what I love about this is that in this instance Batgirl is talking to Batman. And Batman, if you know the character, is very much about fear, and it drove him to become a superhero because he was so afraid of bats after losing his parents and so afraid of criminals after losing his parents. He’s got a lot of fear in his life, and it’s driven him to do just about everything that he has ever done.
Batgirl comes along and she’s advocating for hope. She’s advocating for not focusing on fear but focusing on hope as a driving force. In her characterization, she’s very much like this. She’s spunky, she’s positive, she’s forward-thinking, and she actually makes friends with a lot of the villains along the way and helps them see that hope is a better way of approaching their world than fear as well.
Shi:
Right. We can see how the two strategies play out, and maybe the benefits of hope from that example, Kay. I love that you brought that forward and love that she brings forward that it’s not necessarily about getting rid of the fear here. If you’re in the line of work of Batman and Batgirl, then your line of work has to do a lot with fear. There are many people whose line of work has a lot to do with fear, whether you’re in the police force or you’re in healthcare, or you are in therapy, or you’re an educator you’re dealing with people’s fears on different levels or addressing fear at the societal level almost all of the time.
So, fear is present. Fear is the other shade of emotion we feel. There are really only two emotions, love and fear. So, it encompasses this whole half of the emotions that we feel. But remembering that it’s only half is what brings forward here that dimension that there’s room for hope too and allowing ourselves to step onto that side of the yin and yang, and to embrace it and know that we can live on that side and only have the small circle of black rather than live on the big black side and only have the small circle of white.
Kay:
Look, we’re not here saying down with fear, up with hope necessarily. We are not here to disparage fear. Fear is a very real thing. It has a very real function in your life. It helps you not die. That’s the basic thing that it helps you do. Fear in us is often expressed in very primal ways. We even find ourselves in social situations going back down to fight or flight because our biology hasn’t caught up quite yet with the level of complex social society that we are in. So, fear does serve a purpose, and it helps to offer, like Shila said, that contrast, that yin, and yang. So, really lean in. It’s okay for there to be fear but what she’s saying here is that EVERYTHING doesn’t have to be about fear. So, if you find yourself focusing too much on fear or thinking that fear is the only way out, or that fear is the way for me to create boundaries to not get hurt in my life or whatever that may be, maybe hope has a little bit of room to shine through.
Shi:
Maybe it does and hopefully, it does, and what a better way for us to live our lives. There’s the advice often given to feel the fear and do it anyway. I think giving that permission for fear, which is oftentimes the message is down with fear, up with hope. So, saying, look, fear is okay, and it’s useful to us and there’s definitely biological imperatives programmed in us to get away from fear. But what you have is such a beautiful, advanced biological computer between your ears and you have the ability to grab the steering wheel when fear takes control and say, thank you. Thank you for turning on the siren. I understand that you’re alerting me to potential dangers, and I can see that there’s all this open road and I can see that there’s all this opportunity. And I can see that if I look up just a little further away, that there is a beautiful sunrise or sunset or whatever it is aka the hope. So, understanding and acknowledging the fear and then doing it anyway, I think is relevant advice to bring forward here.
Kay:
So, as a reminder of what Batgirl tells us, “Everything doesn’t have to be about fear. There is room in our line of work for hope too.”
Shi:
Alright, that brings you to a Thoughtful Thursday Quest today. As you know, as we just talked about, they say feel the fear and do it anyway. So, with that in mind today, we want you to focus on the hope and ask yourself what if it did work out and spend a little time in that energy, feeling it and feeling hopeful. Are you ready?
Shi:
Let’s quest!
