Embracing Fear
If you’re one of the people who get to enjoy the Public Garden or Jamaica Pond in Boston, you may have seen me and my sign that asks, “What’s your biggest challenge right now?”
It wasn’t that long ago that sitting in public with that sign for all the world to see was my biggest challenge. The first time I hung that sign was scary AF. So scary in fact that the fear manifested itself as pretty severe abdominal pain and diarrhea.
But why? I knew I wanted to start conversations with real people yet, at the same time, I didn’t want to be seen.
Fear is an incredibly powerful emotion. Humans evolved with fear. Or put in a better way, fear allowed humans to survive and evolve since before our ancestors crawled out of the primordial goo. (Maybe not your ancestors, but certainly mine.) Back in the day, being seen and being rejected were two of the best ways of dying. Sadly, in some parts of the world, that is still a fact for many people, especially women and gay folks.
Victoria Song taught me that I can metabolize my fear. It goes like this. Sitting in a comfortable position with your eyes, locate where in the body fear lives. What does it look like? What shape is it? How big is it? What color is it? See the fear change into something that you can have a conversation with. Talk to it. Find out what it wants for you. Fear not only wants you to stay alive, it also wants what’s best for you.
Going from making the decision to go public and hang my sign to actually hanging the sign was too big to take in one step. I broke it down into many smaller phases over the course of several days.
Go to the park. Find a place to sit and engage in people-watching.
Go to the park with my tripod and sign in my backpack. Sit and people-watch.
Go to the park. Set up the tripod without the sign. Sit and people-watch.
Go to the park. Set up the tripod with the sign. Sit and people-watch. Be surprised at how enjoyable my first conversation is. Get excited about returning to the park for more conversations.
Fear and excitement live next to each other. Sometimes excitement masquerades as fear. But sometimes it really is fear. That’s okay. Courage is not the absence of fear but rather moving forward while embracing the thing that’s kept us alive all this time.
