fear of flying

You’ve heard it before, fear of failure, fear of success, it’s one or the other or a little of both when we have the fear of the future, fear of the unknown, when we leave the comfort of what we know for the unknown. Trouble is with life, it just never, ever, really stays the same. Maybe the trick is to balance out the known with the unknown, if this is possible. To have just the right percentages of safety and adventure, but then I’m sure those percentages are just not the same for each person, or even the same for the same person, at different times in their life.

So, here I am in the space of the extra hour of daylight savings time, filling out paperwork for new office space, feeling very anxious, and yes, afraid. And so I had to ask myself, “What am I most afraid of?” And part of it is not wanting to let people down, not wanting to fail, and not wanting to be vulnerable, in that place of not knowing, and having to trust other people to trust me, that I can do ok. And so, I have to feel my fear, my heart racing, my shoulders tensing and move into the future. I have to still the thoughts that say, “Just stay where you are, it’s not so bad.” As if there really is ever an option, to stay where we are.

I do keep thinking about how hard life is, not necessarily physically hard, but its these existential dilemmas that keep our breath rattling around in our bodies, instead of coming steady and strong, peace in, anxiety out. The thoughts wondering if we’re measuring up, or not, the worry of “Is this all there is?” that seems to come out of nowhere, just when we think we’ve got it all figured out. So, I’m trying to figure out my base line, where is it that I can just live and love and accept myself and others. To say, so what if I fail? I can always come back home to myself, breath in, breath out, and start all over again.