Our lives are shaped by an incalculable series of decisions, and I think how we conceptualise and react to fear feels critical to this process of decision making. We’re taught to turn away from fear, and evolutionarily, that has been very effective and advantageous for humans. But I wonder how valuable our instinctive fear is today, in an age where we have tamed the earth so thoroughly that it is finally turning against us once more. For as long as I can remember, I have feared things and chosen to walk, or run, toward them. It’s not clear where this desire (or habit?) came from, maybe early attempts at facing fear paid off – like playing piano for hours to crack that really difficult combination of notes despite my fingers’ perceived blundering, or feeling the unmistakable, unbridled horde of butterflies in my stomach before a performance and going on stage to sing regardless, or choosing to learn to program, despite knowing it will force me to feel like a fumbling, hopeless baby when I feel so capable and assured in my other endeavours.
But fear rules the lives of many. It rules their hopes, desires, dreams and fantasies, their capacity for imagining a fulfilling life and their ability to manifest that life. It traps you in the details rather than feeling ablaze at the vision. Living fearlessly is a muscle you tend to each day. It’s listening to and pursuing what is nestled deep in your heart, even if the world makes you feel like that’s unreasonable, unattainable, greedy, or outrageous. It’s choosing to face the thing that feels insurmountable, understanding that there’s a chance you will stumble, but you’ll pick up, brush off and continue nevertheless. It’s endeavouring to create a spanning, adventurous, exceptional life because surely that is what the accident of our birth affords and begs of us. It is imagining the view from lofty heights, and that inspiring you to fly.
What never felt natural was allowing the fear to stop or rule me, because what kind of life would that cultivate? The kind of life where you don’t face fear feels infinitely more existentially terrifying.