ON FACING FEAR

To obliterate a lifetime fear of man-eating deep-water fish, I recently took a very bold step. While vacationing on an island in the shark-infested waters of the Caribbean, I decided to go snorkeling.

Though one might have guessed this foolish act of defiance could have ended scarily, it did not. The seductively warm waters of the Caribbean instantly numbed my overly-active imagination. Before you could say, “Twenty thousand leagues under the sea,” I was bobbing along peacefully looking down at a myriad of fishes that were bobbing along looking peacefully up at me.

What a liberation it is to be freed from fear at last. In the dark cavity of my mind where fear resided and courage was supposed to, I could imagine taking similar risks elsewhere in life that would move my life forward in exciting and unimaginable ways.

Daily I dipped my toes into the scary Caribbean to be vaccinated from fear in it’s dangerous yet healing waters. Daily I ventured ever further and further from shore, to put myself within arms reach of fears I knew so well.

On the third day I even swam out just shy of where the mighty waves crashed against the coral reefs that lined the lagoon. On that day, fish everywhere faced out to sea at the incoming current as though they too had finally found the courage to look their innermost demons squarely in the eye.

As we bobbed together looking out to sea, those fish and I, seaweed twisted and danced it’s way past us driven by a powerful and relentless current. The stirred-up sand of the sunny surf gave the water the eerie effervescent look of ginger-ale freshly poured on ice. Every fish, (myself included, as I felt so at one with them at that moment), looked out to sea, from where barracudas, sharks, even fisherman might suddenly stage an attack. It was in that fearful breath-taking moment where I was about to turn another psychic corner and come even more into middle-aged manhood. (It was exactly the same for the fish too, as best as I could tell).

The sense of profound accomplishment of that precise instant is beyond the literary lexicon. Suspended in this strange other-worldliness, I felt weaned from a debilitating life-long fear. I was as brave as any small fish in any vast sea. In some small way, I was becoming a little more the man I was meant to be.

But then, there is always someone who has to ruin it, isn’t there? Because just then, I glance right to the sound of my own wheezing snorkel breath and see the feet of two tourists standing next to me, knee deep in water. Why couldn’t they have stood further off? Why did they have to shatter this transitional moment into manhood? Did I really need the ‘friendly feet of reality’ to remind me that I was not quite ‘in over my head’ as I was imagining?

“Live and let live,” I heard myself say underwater as much for fishes everywhere as for myself.

Oh well, so I have not made it into the deep waters of the Caribbean … yet. Tomorrow is another day.

This week, face a fear in some small way and discover if there is something you have been missing.

Have a great week!