The illusion of fearlessness often manifests as a kind of psychological armor – we convince ourselves we’re beyond fear, untouchable. But this supposed fearlessness can actually be a defense mechanism, a way of avoiding the vulnerability that comes with truly engaging with life. True courage doesn’t seem to be so much about being fearless – it’s about acknowledging our fears and moving forward despite them.
The fear of living itself is particularly paradoxical. It can manifest as a reluctance to fully engage with life’s experiences, to take risks, to open ourselves to both joy and pain, while not being afraid of what might be physically dangerous. This fear might lead us to live in a kind of half-state – physically alive but emotionally and spiritually withdrawn. We might avoid deep relationships, challenging opportunities, or meaningful changes because they require us to be vulnerable and face potential loss or failure.
The relationship between these two concepts – the illusion of fearlessness and the fear of living – is especially intriguing. Sometimes, those who project the strongest image of fearlessness are actually the most afraid of truly living. Their apparent fearlessness becomes a cage, preventing them from experiencing the full spectrum of human experience, including the fears that make us human.
What makes this dynamic even more complex is that some degree of fear is not just natural but necessary for meaningful living. Fear can be an indicator of what we truly care about, what matters to us. The person who claims to fear nothing might also love nothing, risk nothing, and ultimately live nothing.
There’s a particular kind of emptiness that comes not from feeling sad, but from feeling nothing at all. It’s a state many of us find ourselves in, though we rarely talk about it. We exist in a fortress of our own making – safe, perhaps, but isolated from the very experiences that make life vibrant and meaningful.
I’ve come to understand this state as emotional inertia. It’s not depression exactly, nor is it simple apathy. It’s more like being trapped in a glass box, watching life happen around you but feeling fundamentally disconnected from it. The most insidious part? Sometimes we convince ourselves this is preferable to the alternative.
“It’s not worth it,” we tell ourselves. “I wouldn’t know how to engage anyway.” These aren’t just excuses – they’re reflections of a deeper truth: somewhere along the way, many of us lost or never developed the emotional muscles needed for deep engagement with life. It’s as if we’re standing at the edge of a pool, knowing we should jump in, but feeling paralyzed by both the uncertainty of how to enter and a profound passivity that makes even taking that first step seem impossibly demanding.
The cruel paradox is that the person who claims to fear nothing might also love nothing, risk nothing, and ultimately live nothing. We build these walls of numbness thinking they’ll protect us from pain, but they end up protecting us from everything – joy, connection, growth, and yes, even the ability to feel fear itself.
This isn’t just about lack of motivation. It’s about a fundamental disconnect between knowing intellectually that life could be more and feeling capable of actually reaching for it. The challenge becomes self-reinforcing: the less we engage, the more foreign engagement feels, and the more insurmountable it appears.
But perhaps there’s another way to think about this. What if, instead of seeing engagement as an all-or-nothing proposition, we viewed it as a series of tiny experiments? Maybe it starts with allowing ourselves to feel mild interest in something small – a song that catches our attention, the taste of a new food, a moment of sunrise. No pressure to feel more than that. No expectation of transformation. Just small moments of allowing ourselves to experience rather than observe.
The path out of emotional inertia isn’t about suddenly becoming fearless or forcing ourselves to feel everything at once. It’s about gentle recognition – acknowledging where we are without judgment, understanding that this state of being likely served a purpose at some point in our lives, and accepting that change, if we want it, can begin with the smallest of steps.
To those standing at the edge of their own pools, watching others swim while feeling unable to join in: you’re not alone in this. The very fact that you can recognize this state in yourself is already a form of engagement. Sometimes, acknowledging the glass box is the first step toward finding its door.
Note to self and to whomever might need this: the goal isn’t to suddenly feel everything. It’s to slowly, gradually allow ourselves the possibility of feeling anything at all. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough of a start
Stories from A Closet of Errors 