NewscomaGot A Two-Pack Habit And A Motel Tan

I talk a lot about being fearless. I guess it is because I want to have more courage, and to impress myself. Do things I never thought I could do.

To know that I can.

It may be the turning 40 thing, but I sort of doubt it. I think it comes down to just making decisions one knows is right and moving through being scared shitless.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote:

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

So, I sit and ponder it. I think of people who have lived in perpetual fear who went through so much more than I did. Anne Frank, People who live through war, Sitting at a lunch counter where it isn’t allowed, proving one’s worth when the “rules” say that you cannot because of the color of your skin, Losing a lover or life partners, finding out that there is a disease that courses through the veins where a cure in not available.

This is fear. Debilitating. Breath-taking and terrifying.

And yet, I haven’t known that kind of fear. I know the other kind. You know, the one where people realize that I’m human, I bite my nails, I worry about my beloved dog dying, getting through another day of work where value is few and far between,  I have written work I won’t submit to publishers (although I will submit other peoples). It is the lit candle where  that is the only light when I go bravely into the darkness because I’m fearful that I won’t be comfortable.

I’m fearful that I will fail. I fear that I will sabotage what I have.

You see, being fearless is what I think about. God knows, I’ve jumped through the open windows, and many times I’ve landed on my feet. There have been other times I’ve crashed horribly, but I try.

I try to do something everyday that scares me. Five out of seven days, I get it done. The other two, I sit back and do nothing. And everyday we spend pondering the possibilities, is one day that we have lost.

And for whatever reason, this is on my mind tonight. Do not fret, I’m not clinically depressed. I’m just thinking about those open windows, the good kind, wondering which one to chose.

Just mulling it all over in my mind.