Ah, fear...

#Trust30 Writing Prompt

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson says: “Always do what you are afraid to do.” What is ‘too scary’ to write about? Try doing it now. (Author: Mary Jaksch)

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Ah, fear.

For a long time I had convinced myself that fear played no real part in my life. But the reality is that even if you put a different label on something, it doesn't actually change what it is. As I write this, I cannot help but hear Juliet's infamous quote, as written by William Shakespeare,

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet."

By the same token, calling fear anything else, does not change what it actually is.

So, what is it that I fear?

I. fear. failure.

You have no idea how much those three words pain me. They are just so banal. So common. So prosaic.

So everything that I don't want to be in my life.

But it is true. I fear failure. It keeps me from trying things that I really want to do. It intimidates me when I lie awake at night, taunting, telling me that what I have done, what I can do, isn't enough, and never will be enough. It prods me towards procrastination. Makes me second guess and question the validity of both my design and writing work. It makes me stay in the safe, well-lit playgrounds of creativity instead of heading out to discover the dark, undiscovered, dangerous ones. Keeps me silent, for fear of being wrong, or thought stupid. It keeps me craving a perfection that does not exist, ignoring the beauty that is right before me.

When it all comes down to it, fearing failure is kind of ridiculous. How can you get anywhere without learning, and what better way to learn than first-hand experience?

And besides, for someone who has failed as often as I have, and gotten up and kept going, shouldn't I be less afraid of something that I know isn't actually fatal?

What a beautiful grace that the fears, and failures of our past, do not have to define us, so long as we don't let them.

Choosing to be brave...