November 2, 2022

Notes by Krish Chandar

The topic for this week

This week’s topic is overcoming our fears. Shanker Ji explains that when we think of fears we think of external fears like snakes or clowns. Those fears don’t stop us from doing the things in our everyday life. But internal fears don’t go away, they stay with you through your day-to-day life.

Story #1

This week Shanker Ji summarized an Adventure Time episode for us! The episode starts with Finn the human and Jake the dog chasing a monster into the ocean. Right away Jake starts swimming after the monster, but Finn realizes that he has never seen water before and is petrified by it. Each time the waves receded he ran to the new edge of the beach and when they came crashing back, he would bolt for dry land. Each time he did this the waves would get bigger and bigger. Jake finally realizes that his friend has not joined him in the water, and he goes back to check on him.

He realizes that his friend is afraid of the water and wants to show him it isn’t that bad. He starts by putting Finn’s toe in the water and Finn freaks out! Then he puts Finn’s bed in the water with Finn in it! Finn is scared but since the water isn’t touching him, he feels comfortable. Then Jake breaks the bed, and all that is separating Finn from the water is a sleeping bag. Finn is much more scared now, but the water still isn’t touching him. Then Jake breaks the sleeping bag and Finn is so scared that he runs across the water on a nearby island. In the last-ditch attempt, Jake takes Finn in a submarine to see that the ocean is beautiful, not scary. Unfortunately, Jake takes Finn to a dark, creepy part of the ocean which reinforced his fear. In his haste to leave the submarine Finn breaks it and now they both have to evacuate it. Swimming to the surface Jake gets hit in the head with a rock and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. 

Finn, now on the surface realized that his friend was in danger and dove in to save him. Finn is still afraid of the ocean; he just had enough courage to save his friend. Once he is back on the beach another monster called the fear feaster comes out of his stomach and starts taunting Finn. The monster says things like “You’re no hero!” But when Jake comes back to the beach, he tells Finn that all people have fears, and the mark of a hero is overcoming them.

Moral of the story #1

We cannot run away from our internal fears. Each time we do the fear will get bigger and our courage will shrink. This is shown in the story by Finn running away from the waves. Each time they got bigger and bigger, and he got more and more afraid. Try to tackle your fears in small steps that eventually lead to you overcoming them. In the story, Jake kept trying to help Finn overcome his fear. He started small, dipping Finn’s toe in the water but it eventually grew to drive Finn around in a submarine.

Story #2

The second story Shanker Ji summarized for us was the story of Moses and the Mesopotamian civilization. The story takes place in Egypt where the Pharaoh isn’t treating the Mesopotamians well. They decide to go and live in the desert. A siege of bad things happened, but the thing that pushed them over the brink was these poisonous snakes. They were killing villagers left and right. The villagers asked Moses their leader to do something about the snakes, and Moses asked God what he should do. God tells Moses to make a copper shrine of the snake and put it in the middle of the village. But why?

Moral of the story #2

God tells Moses to make that shrine of the snake so the villagers would see it and become less afraid. Each time they saw it they would become more familiar with it until they were no longer scared. We can find more courage when we face our fears every day.

How to practice in everyday life

We normally do things that are in our comfort zone. But if we only stay in our comfort zone we will never grow. By doing things outside our comfort zone, we are annihilating those fears one small step at a time. We must keep trying to expose ourselves to new, different things. Our comfort zone grows until our fear is gone entirely.

RAW

Our RAW for this week is to sit with different people at lunch each day. If that isn’t possible then instead introduce yourself to three different people, this week. Or just say hi to people you don’t normally talk too.