Commercial Decision Design

Tag: Fear

  • Final Destination

    Final Destination

    Do you remember the movie franchise, Final Destination? That one where death has marked you, and no matter how much you try and avoid it, it catches up with you.

    Life is just like that too. All its messiness will catch up with you, sooner or later. Its inevitable. I’ve been trying to run from messiness for 58 years so that I don’t have to deal with the shame, fear, rejection, unworthiness, self loathing, humiliation and the “I’m not enoughness of it all.”

    Here’s the thing, though. Like monsters, nightmares and ghosts, these afflictions hide in the dusty attics in our hearts and the dark corridors of our soul. They’re infinitely patient and wait for their moment (which is normally when we have a bright spot of joy, certainty, love, and happiness) to trip us up and bring us to our knees.

    In my experience, the only way to prevent the monsters from sabotaging our happiness is to face them. Wrestle with them and overcome them. It’s not an easy fight because we have allowed them to grow strong by feeding them with our insecurities, fears and falsehoods. You’ll come out of the experience battered, bruised and emotionally spent.

    But there is really nothing for it but to face them sooner rather than later. It’s inevitable, they’re coming for us regardless of how much we run. They will always trip us up, frustrate and ruin our lives. Until we decide to face them, and destroy them, that is. It is possible … we can lay waste to them and become victorious in our lives and claim that the prize: to be happy and content.

    So, let’s be brave, you and I, and face them down now.

  • Walk The Yard

    Walk The Yard

    Prison genre movies appeal to something inside me. I’ve watched dozens: The Shawshank Redemption, Jericho Mile, The Green Mile and The Hurricane to name a few. And, loosely lumped into the prison genre are prisoner of war and 2nd World War concentration camp themes too … Schindler’s List (more a Holocaust story) and The Great Escape come to mind.

    “They ask questions of me”

    I think they appeal to me on various levels. They ask questions of me. Questions that I don’t always want to dig too deeply into because I’m afraid I might come up short. Am I a decent human being? Do I still have hope or am I so jaded and cynical that there’s no oxygen for hope to thrive? Do I have courage? Am I a leader? Will I die for a cause? Do I have a cause? Am I redeemable? Is the system so broken that I can never make a difference?

    Walk the yard with me and see how you stack up on this journey that you’re on.

    Hope and inevitability

    I’m cheering for the wrongly-accused, innocent man who needs to battle corrupt officials, malevolent gang leaders and a system geared in every way to destroy him. I’m either delighted when he gets out or distraught when he’s executed. This plot appeals to my sense of hope, in the first instance and my feeling of inevitability in the second.

    This theme plays to three of my biggest fears … being falsely accused of something and taking the fall for it, being abducted by aliens and not being able to tell anybody about it for fear of being thought mad and a five cent coin falling off a 50-story building and hitting me in the head and killing me instantly. I know, I know … thousands of rands of therapy and still no nearer to a cure.

    Can I be redeemed?

    Prison movies appeal to my need for redemption too. I’m always interested to see if a guilty man can change, redeem himself and take that second chance to do something meaningful with the remainder of his life. The redemption theme plays on my fear as well. In these movies the majority of the prison population is by ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ irredeemable. The game is rigged and the outcome is inevitable. My fear is that I’m irredeemable too.

    Benign and gracious system

    These movies also appeal to me because I have hope that the system can be benign and gracious and not mad and malevolent. So, I’m always happy when a prison guard or warden turns out to be a ray of light and hope in a world of darkness and chaos. I gives me hope that I too can can emulate these special and rare beings and make a difference to somebody who is in a dark place.

    Will I pee in my pants?

    Concentration camp movies ask questions of my courage. Would I be able to stand up against a system that is abhorrent to anything that is decent. Would I be prepared to die to protect the innocent. Could I be an Oskar Schindler who saved 1200 Jewish souls during the Holocaust? Could I handle myself with honour and decorum and not pee in my pants when my death is certain?

    Leadership

    Can I be a great leader in the face of insurmountable odds and inspire my men like Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, in the great escape from Stalag Luft lll in 1943?

    Thanks for walking the yard with me. I’ll see you on the outside.