Joe Banks: And why, I ask myself, why have I put up with you? I can't imagine, but now I know. Fear. Yellow freakin' fear. I've been too chicken shit afraid to live my life so I sold it to you for three hundred freakin' dollars a week!
Its one of my favourite films, no its my favourite film, my absolute favourite.
Its basic premise is a man can overcome fear, fear that holds him back for years and years, but only when his own mortality comes sharply into focus. Freed from the shackles of fear he almost completely rejects his own mediocre life and takes on this whole new exciting fulfilling life, he has been duped into believing he is going to die, but in many ways that is just the back story, its overcoming fear that is at the films heart.
This week I've been at home, I've thrown out my back and am hobbling around with a walking stick, I've had no other option but to sit there and watch TV, I've been watching breaking bad. Almost out side of the plot line Walter sits down with his brother-in-law, a man he doesn't like all that much and this is what he says.
| WALTER WHITE I have spent my whole life scared, frightened of things that could happen, might happen, might not happen, 50-years I spent like that. Finding myself awake at three in the morning. But you know what? Ever since my diagnosis, I sleep just fine. HANK Hmmm...okay. WALTER WHITE What I came to realize is that fear, that's the worst of it. That's the real enemy. So, get up, get out in the real world and you kick that bastard as hard as you can right in the teeth. |
And I was so impressed with those words, I'm older than Walt and like him I've spent lots and lots of my life living in fear, and what's worse he is imaginary, a made up character in a TV programme and he has learned something I haven't. Mind you he is dying from inoperable lung cancer, I am very much alive So am I going to have the road to Damascus conversion and become a fearless warrior? a man with no fear? ready to take on young punks, drug lords, my own family and my employer? No chance, no friggin chance, but I am going to ask myself as often as I can, what are you afraid of, just go and be something, be alive. DON'T LIVE IN FEAR ANY MORE. So today I'm sitting on a train, first day back in London (what a stink hole that place is) and the train home is cancelled, another one along in an hour, I limp dejected and in pain to a seat in the concourse. Then it dawns on me, catch an express train home, my ticket may or may not be valid, what will the ticket inspector say? well who cares, you cancel a train on me and I'll catch an express. coz I am a bad ass. Overcoming fear by Kaizen. Maybe I'm onto something................ |
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