Fear. It's a knot in your solar plexus, an uncomfortable tingle down your spine, a rush of adrenaline through your body. It can freeze you up or cause you to lose control. It can even control you. But fear isn't all bad. Fear itself is good. Giving in to fear, well that's what you SHOULD fear.
There's a side to fear that you won't learn of until you face it. Whether you swam into the jaws of the shark knowingly or it grabbed you from behind, it has the capacity to move something within you. Fear can change even the most stagnant of situations. It can budge the most heavy of thoughts and get the boulder rolling down the mountain. You can run, you can hide, but you can't get rid of it until you face it, upfront and ready. And trust me, you are going to want to.
You can try your hardest to put up with the fear, to gain comfort in it's presence, ignoring the urge to roll up in a ball. Or you can look it directly in the eyes, see what is there to be seen and do something about it. The only thing you have to fear is fear itself, that is correct. But you shouldn't have to fear fear? That sounds silly but it's true. You just shouldn't have to. And you don't.
Fear can be your friend. It can nudge you out of your comfort zone, it can awaken the beast within. It can move mountains and change the direction of the wind in an instant, if you allow it to. Fear can get you to places you have never seen, tell you things you have never heard.
I have learned to recognize the way fear feels as it approaches me. The uneasiness, the sudden and blank decision to run away, sometimes not even knowing why or what I am fleeing. I know the perpetuating feeling of discomfort and the confusion of the unknown. I know that it will bring me to beautiful horizons and breathtaking views if only I could push past the discomfort and the unknown, if only I could. I hold this wisdom in my heart, loud and clear. Yet my legs run away first, before I can realize any of this. And in an instant, the moment is gone and I am far away from where I desire, from where I planned.
I think I know what I want, I think I know what I need, but I don't know where that will take me. I don't know how this lesson will turn out or where it will bring me, but I do know that I don't want to fear it. I want it to change me. Perhaps I am just confusing myself and running my mind ragged. Or perhaps I am genuinely working through these thoughts, actually getting somewhere in this chaotic, disorderly mind. I may not possess the answers to anything, but I do have in my grips, the ability to look fear right in the eyes and decide to dance with him. And if I dance with my fear and I learn how to step to his rhythm without him stepping on my toes, perhaps we could create a beautiful scene. And maybe, just maybe that beautiful dance can teach me how fear can help me. It can show me, within myself, not to run away but to stay and dance with him. The music has been playing this whole time and I have been too busy running away to enjoy it.
The truth is, there is beauty in everything. There is beauty in pain, in fear, in apprehension. It's the music that's playing in the background, patiently waiting for us to hear it that holds the beauty. It's the decision to dance with our fears instead of giving them power over us, over our desires and the way we go after them. Fear can be a friend or a foe. A nightmare or a revolution. But the only thing that fear cannot be is your deciding factor.
Fear can't decide the path you take my dears, only you can.
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