Living through fear

At last night's Seder, I sat with a friend who I hadn't seen in several months. About a year ago, she'd decided to have a form of gastric bypass surgery and since then she's lost about ninety pounds. A couple of weeks ago, she had skin removal surgery to finish off her journey. She said the entire thing was about facing her fear.

That got me to thinking. I am a pretty fearful person and I have let fear stop me from doing things I've thought about, or wanted to do.  And she was right when she said that people who don't do things they know they should, or need, to do, or want to do, don't do so because of fear.

I want to be a more fearless person.  Or at least a person who makes choices less because of fear and more because they sound like good choices.  I'd like to learn to live more through my fear and less because of it.

It's easier said than done.

My daughters are very fearless people. How they got this way, I don't know, because that's the opposite of me.  My older daughter is planning a semester abroad in the fall, choosing a country she's never been to, with people she has never met, to live in and with for four months. On top of that, she's also planning to travel through Europe, to a bunch of countries she's never been to.

My younger daughter decided to take on a new activity this past winter called Winter Guard. It's dancing with flags, rifles, and sabres to music with a group, precisely matching each others steps at the exact same times. She had never danced before. The Winter Guard in our school comes with a very strict, no nonsense, tough coach, as well.  But she wanted to do it. She said she would be sorry if she didn't at least try it.  It wasn't easy, at times, but she hung in there and handled the sport and stress gracefully for four months, and she liked it enough that she thinks she will do it again next year.

So it seems like it might be my turn to learn to live through my fear.  If I'm anything like my friend or my daughters, everything should turn out just fine.