We have nothing to fear, but…

I was staring down into a thirty-foot ravine, a large group of people waiting to cross a bridge that was not much more than wire and planks and… my feet refused to move.

Will Smith has a short video, it’s on YouTube, called What Skydiving Taught Me About Fear. It’s a motivational talk about the time he jumped out of an airplane in Dubai. In it he says,

“The point of maximum danger is the point of minimum fear.”

He also asks, “Why were you scared? What do you need that fear for?”

“God’s placed the best things in life on the other side of fear,” he concludes.

I’m not so sure I agree.

That time? In Hawaii when my feet could not be convinced to budge? That was not my first time crossing that bridge.

I had already made it across once, terrified beyond belief. We were on a rainforest hike with a group of my husband’s coworkers. We had to cross the bridge once going into the rainforest and then again coming out.

The only thing that would have been scarier for me was to have made the others in the group, people who had paid good money to go on this hike, wait for me while one of the guides led me down the ravine and up the other side.

I had somehow managed to do it the first time, never dreaming that I’d face that same rickety, swinging, primitive, terrifying, unsafe thing again. When I was staring down at it for the second time, I did not feel bliss. I had not been released from my fear by doing the thing that scared me the most.

It had not been conquered. I can feel the vertigo and nausea as I write this.

But I did it. I somehow got my feet to move even though they felt like they were in cement shoes and bolted to the ground.

Would I do it again? Hell, no.

The top fears are public speaking, heights (that’s me!), bugs and snakes, blood and needles, flying, and strangers. And, for some reason, zombies. But there must be a spectrum between ick and terror because some fears are resolved by pushing through and others become worse.

I’ve never been afraid of public speaking. I may get a little nervous sometimes, I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t, but never afraid. There was a guy in one of the French classes I took in college who was petrified by it. And it wasn’t all that public—we all knew each other, he was well liked, we each had to get up and present. Why was he shaking and almost unable to speak? I didn’t understand until I met that bridge in the rain forest.

Tomorrow, I start teaching my class, Inner Wisdom: Finding Your Guide Within. It’s my first online class. My first time recording myself. My first time on Facebook Live. Am I nervous? You bet. Scared? Yes, I can admit I am. Will I let those feelings keep me from doing it? Absolutely not.

Because even when we’re afraid we shouldn’t let anything hold us back. As FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”