Through Fear and Trembling
My friend and I decided to spontaneously go to Franconia Notch for Memorial Day as an adventure, and it was awesome. Except for the point when I had to cross the river… Four times.
Spoiler Alert: I ended up okay, I’m still in one piece.
The first two crosses had me riddled in fear on rocks I wasn’t sure I could find balance on. My friend forged ahead of me, conquering it in her sneakers. I had rugged Timberland hiking boots on my feet and one of the things I blurted out was “what if my feet get wet?”
What if I fell? What if I hurt myself? What if my backpack drops in the river and I lose my keys and phone? What if my watch gets submerged and stops working? Small issues, all riddled by this mindset I’ve been learning I sometimes carry when it gets uncomfortable.
“I can’t.”
Franconia Notch reminds me of all my “I can’t’s.” And yet, there was this odd feeling as I felt my legs burn up and down four miles of mountainous terrain: “One day, you will say about this place “I can” and fear of mountains, fear of man, and fear of failing will absolutely be no more.”
The funny thing about any kind of fear is that it makes you think you can’t. But the minute you conquer it and realize you can, you stop and wonder why you ever let the “what if’s” riddle your brain and render your life as anything other than worth the risk taking.
There’s a hill in a neighborhood behind the complex where I live that I used to dread running up about a month ago. Nothing steep or huge, but enough to feel a really horrible burn in your legs and it renders you slow as molasses when trying to run up it.
My first time up, I only made it halfway. The following week, I made it three quarters of the way. Once I summited by walk, I continued to run until I made it to the bottom. A little less than week-three later, I conquered the hill running up, circling back down, and then some… Without stopping. Now, I can’t get enough of the hills, and wonder how many more times I can conquer that same exact hill.
Could what is a 1.5 mile turn into a three miler twice? Up and down the same street?
You see, what was once fear of this hill I thought I could never climb has now turned into a challenge I want to take on, something I see as worth the risk taking. In the same way, my journey in life — almost collectively across the board — has been riddled by this kind of scenario: Fear (thinking ‘I can’t’), rendering the risk worth it, trying, either failing or succeeding (realizing ‘I can’), and moving forward with whatever the result is.
Positive or negative results usually have a way of paving the way forward, but the negative results of past mistakes, misunderstood intentions, failure to succeed at a race, etc… should never be a reason to fear trying again.
Trying again may be the very time you succeed, get it right, and make amends.
My time in quarantine has been very much filled with this sentiment of “I can’t” turning into “actually, I can” as I have learned to conquer fears that have been both minor and major in my ability to connect, reflect, and really live my life well over the last several years.
Things I believed would never get resolved have shown themselves new to me as a tentative step forward. Hills I never believed I could conquer in running have turned into questions of “what more can I accomplish?” Crossing rivers in the woods is now something I am capable of.
I truly believe that fear is something we all hype up in our heads when really it’s just stuff that we need to let go of and allow to transform us into something better. We get words wrong at the wrong times, but there are always moments to reconcile or say those words later. We make mistakes, subsequently dealing with the consequences, but oftentimes the consequences turn into a lesson we can move forward with.
We think we’ll fail, when really, the failure is not having tried at all.
I don’t know about you, my friends, but I wanna live having tried my best to squeeze every bit of life out of my little timeline here as much as I possibly can.
Both through the fear, and trembling if I must.