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Coping with Your Fear of
Hummingbirds… and other
things you shouldn’t worry
about
By Mary Cartledgehayes
In 1998, I saw my first
hummingbird. I’d hung one of those
special red feeders from a nail on
my back porch, and two days later I
heard a whir and saw a morsel of a
bird drinking from the feeder. A
moment later, I got a close look at its
ruby throat when it came to
investigate me. Its wings blurred like
an egg beater gone mad while it
hovered a few feet away, directly at
my eye level.
I marveled at how closely its slender
beak resembled a lance, and then I
got frightened. It’s going to peck my
eyes out, I thought.
Later I identified the source of my
fear. I was walking through the woods with some other children when I was young, and
somebody spotted a bird’s nest. I reached to pull the branch down a bit so I could see
the pretty blue eggs, but one of the boys stopped me.
“Don’t touch it. If you do, the mother bird will come back and peck your eyes out.”
Decades later, the words echoed and I sat rigid, staring at the hummingbird, barely
daring to breathe.
As 2006 fades into memory, other people are making lists of resolutions, while I’m
thinking about fear. Why is that? I expect it’s because 2007 is going to be a year of
change. Not just for me: for all of us. Old friends will move away, new friends will
appear, we’ll start a new job, return to school, explore new restaurants or old memories,
and we’ll change. We can’t imagine how we’ll be changed, and we can’t control it, and
so we grow fearful.
Or maybe we already are. I’ve seen strong men grow pale at the thought of seeing a
dentist and brave women tremble at the thought of committing their opinions to paper. I’
m hardly immune. I once took a charcoal-drawing class years ago, and for the first half
hour all I did was wave the charcoal stick an inch away from the paper, afraid to make
that first, determining mark.
Fear does that. It paralyzes us. It interferes with our lives, prevents us from getting
health care, from trying new things, from living well — unless we choose to do
something about it.
My grandson Devin and I gave ourselves a splendid present this summer. We visited
the Muhammad Ali Center on Sixth Street and River Road. At one exhibit we stood at a
lunch counter while a recorded voice told us to ‘get out.’ We walked through depictions
of the 1960s struggles over civil rights and the war. We saw, wonderfully, the torch with
which Ali lit the flame at the Atlanta Olympics.
The context in which we surveyed Ali’s life was a quotation from boxer Joe Martin. It’s
posted in the first exhibit to the right after you step off the escalator on the fifth floor.
Martin says that he and Ali would “be getting ready for a fight, a tough fight, and he’d
be sitting around brooding about the flight he had to take.”
Ali, brooding about flying? Yes — because he was afraid to fly. In The Soul of a
Butterfly, co-written with his daughter, Hana Yasmeen Ali, he says the fear began
during a rough flight from Louisville to California for the Olympic trials. By the time he
disembarked, he’d decided never to fly again. He’d take a bus or a train to Italy for the
Olympics, but he wasn’t getting on a plane.
Of course, he eventually did. Granted, he took along his own parachute, and he
developed an elaborate plan in case the aircraft malfunctioned, but he boarded the
plane, flew to Rome, and brought home Olympic gold for the United States.
Ali makes the point that it’s okay to be afraid. Everybody is at one time or another.
What matters is that we don’t let the fear prevent us from achieving our best.
How can we contend with fear? There are numerous tools. Anger, for instance, can
sometimes catapult us past fear. Wonder can, too; my enchantment with the
hummingbird overcame mine. Information is a great tool; for instance, asking a dentist
about recent advances in pain prevention can lead to both an improved smile and an
increased life expectancy. Therapists and doctors may be helpful, and so might anti-
anxiety medications, or vigorous exercise, or calming meditation. Cutting yourself a little
slack can be helpful, too; if your goal is a perfect drawing in your first turn at the easel,
maybe it’s time to lower your expectations.
Analyzing your fear can also help. A contributor to the online encyclopedia wikipedia
made an important distinction between serious fear — which might be warranted if, for
example, you’re waiting for medical test results — and trifling fear, the kind that bears
no relationship to the likelihood of an event coming to pass or to whether any real harm
would result.
I love that word, trifling. It lets me easily differentiate between serious concerns and the
vague fluffy kind that otherwise weigh me down. It frees me to experience things I might
otherwise avoid. It lets me keep an eye out for hummingbirds and, when they
approach, to observe them up close with a free and happy heart.
Hummingbirds… and other
things you shouldn’t worry
about
By Mary Cartledgehayes
In 1998, I saw my first
hummingbird. I’d hung one of those
special red feeders from a nail on
my back porch, and two days later I
heard a whir and saw a morsel of a
bird drinking from the feeder. A
moment later, I got a close look at its
ruby throat when it came to
investigate me. Its wings blurred like
an egg beater gone mad while it
hovered a few feet away, directly at
my eye level.
I marveled at how closely its slender
beak resembled a lance, and then I
got frightened. It’s going to peck my
eyes out, I thought.
Later I identified the source of my
fear. I was walking through the woods with some other children when I was young, and
somebody spotted a bird’s nest. I reached to pull the branch down a bit so I could see
the pretty blue eggs, but one of the boys stopped me.
“Don’t touch it. If you do, the mother bird will come back and peck your eyes out.”
Decades later, the words echoed and I sat rigid, staring at the hummingbird, barely
daring to breathe.
As 2006 fades into memory, other people are making lists of resolutions, while I’m
thinking about fear. Why is that? I expect it’s because 2007 is going to be a year of
change. Not just for me: for all of us. Old friends will move away, new friends will
appear, we’ll start a new job, return to school, explore new restaurants or old memories,
and we’ll change. We can’t imagine how we’ll be changed, and we can’t control it, and
so we grow fearful.
Or maybe we already are. I’ve seen strong men grow pale at the thought of seeing a
dentist and brave women tremble at the thought of committing their opinions to paper. I’
m hardly immune. I once took a charcoal-drawing class years ago, and for the first half
hour all I did was wave the charcoal stick an inch away from the paper, afraid to make
that first, determining mark.
Fear does that. It paralyzes us. It interferes with our lives, prevents us from getting
health care, from trying new things, from living well — unless we choose to do
something about it.
My grandson Devin and I gave ourselves a splendid present this summer. We visited
the Muhammad Ali Center on Sixth Street and River Road. At one exhibit we stood at a
lunch counter while a recorded voice told us to ‘get out.’ We walked through depictions
of the 1960s struggles over civil rights and the war. We saw, wonderfully, the torch with
which Ali lit the flame at the Atlanta Olympics.
The context in which we surveyed Ali’s life was a quotation from boxer Joe Martin. It’s
posted in the first exhibit to the right after you step off the escalator on the fifth floor.
Martin says that he and Ali would “be getting ready for a fight, a tough fight, and he’d
be sitting around brooding about the flight he had to take.”
Ali, brooding about flying? Yes — because he was afraid to fly. In The Soul of a
Butterfly, co-written with his daughter, Hana Yasmeen Ali, he says the fear began
during a rough flight from Louisville to California for the Olympic trials. By the time he
disembarked, he’d decided never to fly again. He’d take a bus or a train to Italy for the
Olympics, but he wasn’t getting on a plane.
Of course, he eventually did. Granted, he took along his own parachute, and he
developed an elaborate plan in case the aircraft malfunctioned, but he boarded the
plane, flew to Rome, and brought home Olympic gold for the United States.
Ali makes the point that it’s okay to be afraid. Everybody is at one time or another.
What matters is that we don’t let the fear prevent us from achieving our best.
How can we contend with fear? There are numerous tools. Anger, for instance, can
sometimes catapult us past fear. Wonder can, too; my enchantment with the
hummingbird overcame mine. Information is a great tool; for instance, asking a dentist
about recent advances in pain prevention can lead to both an improved smile and an
increased life expectancy. Therapists and doctors may be helpful, and so might anti-
anxiety medications, or vigorous exercise, or calming meditation. Cutting yourself a little
slack can be helpful, too; if your goal is a perfect drawing in your first turn at the easel,
maybe it’s time to lower your expectations.
Analyzing your fear can also help. A contributor to the online encyclopedia wikipedia
made an important distinction between serious fear — which might be warranted if, for
example, you’re waiting for medical test results — and trifling fear, the kind that bears
no relationship to the likelihood of an event coming to pass or to whether any real harm
would result.
I love that word, trifling. It lets me easily differentiate between serious concerns and the
vague fluffy kind that otherwise weigh me down. It frees me to experience things I might
otherwise avoid. It lets me keep an eye out for hummingbirds and, when they
approach, to observe them up close with a free and happy heart.