I tend to harbor quite a few fears. I’m afraid of water. I’m definitely afraid of heights, and I’m afraid of large crowds and different animals and everything else you could probably imagine. I am pretty much an indoor cat. I really enjoy safe spaces, quiet spaces, and that feeling of tranquility that comes when you’re just alone with your thoughts, but I really admire, I really respect people who show courage and show bravery especially in the face of huge challenges and adversity. So when it comes to this issue of courage and bravery, I’m not so familiar, but I’m familiar through others' experiences. When I see others facing these challenges, I respect that and I really admire that. I really want to emulate those characteristics.
I am lucky because I’ve gotten to work with a lot of people who are refugees, who have left their home countries for one reason or another, usually under threat of violence, and who have relocated to another country. I always find refugees to be some of the bravest and most courageous people that I’ve ever met in my life and often they don’t even realize it. They don’t even quite comprehend or they haven’t even processed the fearlessness and the bravery that they’ve shown in their transition to another country as a refugee.
I think a lot about what it takes to overcome the challenges that many of us face. I think about what it takes to face adversity and to find ways of getting through it, through those experiences. One of my favorite stories comes from a dear friend and colleague. Her mother talks about her experience as a refugee leaving her country at a very very young age. It wasn’t something she planned. It was something her parents planned for her, and they just let her go to another country, to move to a refugee camp, and then to relocate to Norway. I find this utterly profound because as a child, having to leave your country, leave your home, and having to set out and craft a life of your own, in my mind, that’s terrifying. You couldn’t get further outside of your comfort zone. But in her mind, when I’ve spoken to her about it, it often just comes down to this issue of “we had no other choice”. She talks about it as having to take her siblings, her brothers and sisters, and just get on a boat and leave, and the circumstances she found herself in, after that decision, were absolutely horrifying. But her perspective is so much different than mine because I look at her and I think how afraid I would be but she thought of it as just a necessity. She didn’t have a choice to be afraid. She could only accept the moment that she was in and find ways of working through everyday life until she was able to come to a place of safety and security.
So I think about fear in my life and most of the fear that I experienced is really kind of self-induced. I am afraid of going out on the water, but my wife still wants me to go out with her on the water because she loves taking boats out to see whales and to see the different animals out in the water. But for me, that’s a scary experience but it’s self-induced. I choose to do that. I choose to have that experience.
Many of us who have to show bravery and courage do so not out of choice but out of necessity. We have to show courage. We have to show bravery. So this is my experience of how courage and fearlessness and bravery operate in daily life. I know I’ve said fearlessness a couple of times but really, there’s no such thing as fearlessness. Even the bravest and most courageous of people experience fear. That’s part of what it is to be brave and what it is to be courageous. It is moving through fear. Feeling it, experiencing it, then following the necessity of your experience.
I hope as you face fears in your life, whether it’s chosen or not, that you can find that self-determination, that will move through those fears, and look at it not as a choice, but just as a necessity. And hopefully, you can find some solace and some comfort in the fact.
