Remember Fear?

I'd like to start this entry with a quote from Winston Churchill, "success is not final, failure is not fatal. it is the courage to continue that counts." a perfect quote to summarize my life right now, if there ever was one.

Courage, the strength it takes to complete a task in the face of fear. i've learned awhile ago that everything in this world comes in twos: good and bad (like and dislike, easy and hard, black and white…) i know the world is not black and white. but it is a mix of black and white, just like life is made up of likes and dislikes, easy things and hard things. All experiences have opposite extremes that cannot be separated, just like the north and south poles of a magnet. cut the magnet in half and you get two magnets, with two north and two south poles. there is no one without the other. there is no good without bad. no courage without fear.

because all experiences we encounter are defined by opposites. whether you realize it or not, the level of our happiness can be elevated by how much sadness we've experienced. our sadness deepened by how much happiness we used to know. but fear is a curious thing. it starts with a little feeling. perhaps sadness..sadness that we didn't accomplish what we set out to accomplish. then that sadness turns to worry. we worry that the next time we come across a similar experience, we may once again fail. then we actually come face to face with our next task. and when put on the spot, our worry becomes full blown fear. and that fear keeps us from doing what we need to do. and so the cycle begins: fear that started out from failure now causes our failure, which in turn fuels our fear of failure.

so what do you do in the face of fear? you must realize that fear is not a bad thing. which brings me to another quote: "beneath the greatest saint, lies the greatest sinner. that the one is put into place to control the other." fear makes us doubt ourselves. but it also forces us to react in ways we may not expect. think about what people do when they don't know fear. think back to when you were a kid, having never experienced fear.. what do kids do? they eat bugs off the sidewalk. they run into traffic. they fall and break their bones. ok, so maybe these things aren't stuff only kids do, but my point is…people do these things for different reasons. kids do them because maybe they don't know any better. adults do them for better reasons (hopefully.) because I would eat a bug if i'm stranded somewhere with no food around. I would run into traffic, if an axe murderer was chasing me. and I would purposefully break a bone……….hmm, so i can't really say that I would do this one, but Aron Ralston definitely broke his arm to free himself from a boulder after being stuck for 127 hours in Utah. (have u seen the movie 127 hours with James Franco?) all of these things would take courage. some would take more courage than others. but that courage comes from fear. fear of death. and i guarantee you the most courageous person you will ever meet in your life will have gone through some of the most fearful things. either that or they have yet to realize their true potential.

failure makes us realize what we really want, because it makes us face the question of whether what we are pursuing is really worth the pain. and if it is, then what we gain from feeling our fear is courage. we become courageous enough to pursue the possibility of the pain that we have experienced before. but at the same time, our fears from previous engagements help us make wiser choices, so maybe this next time it won't be as painful. we need courage to pull ourselves out of fear, and we need fear to hold us back from doing things that may be morally questionable. and in the end, its this balance that leads us through a successful life.