surfer girl goes global

Today I was reading 24 hours and I came across an article about fear:

We are all afraid of something, which leads to the pointed question: What would we do if we weren’t afraid? Write a novel, quit a job, get married, divorced, or, like Thoreau, go off into the woods for two years and simplify, simplify, simplify?

Fear shapes who we are. We’re afraid to meet the world naked, so we build personalities to protect ourselves and become imprisoned in a character we build too quickly. We feel comfortable with the status quo – positive or negative – that we have adapted to, like a tailor-made straightjacket. We fear change in a universe where the only constant is change.

One American astronaut stood on the moon looking at this pale, blue dot shining in the black ocean of infinity and realized that the only problems existed on Earth. We have to realize, as the astronaut did, that we create those problems. His was such a life-changing realization he never forgot. We, on the other hand, need to be reminded constantly that we create our own reality. When the alarm goes off at six, we hit the floor running and there isn’t much time for thinking and reflction. We’re too busy and by the time we clean up the kitchen at night and make lunches for the next day, we’re too tired to do anything except read the paper and veg in front of the TV. It’s tiring thinking about it, but we have to find the mental and physical strength to get off that hampster wheel.

One way is to love our fate, which carries the lessons we need with it. If we could get past the fear we would realize we are in partnership with life. We hang onto our life situations instead of allowing life to be; we fear losing as much as change. Our image is tied to our jobs, our sports, our families and we resist anything we haven’t scripted. If we were smarter, we would appreciate our losses because they, not our victories, teach us the important lessons.

“When looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. Nothing happens to you that is not positive even though it looks and feels like a negative. The dark night of the soul comes just before the revelation,” Mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote.

Even when we finally dredge up the courage to deal with our fear, there is no guarantee the next incident will be any less daunting. But it’s pretty much a guarantee we won’t accomplish what we want by ignoring the fear. Some actors throw up before every performance – but they go on stage.

Attending Toastmasters is a great idea, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have butterflies when we step up to the podium. We can, however, teach the butterflies to fly in formation.

“Fear is the mind killer,” wrote Frank Herbert, the author of Dune and many other novels. “Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I must face my fear. I must permit it to pass over me and through me.”