Courage and Fear

I am courageous. Not in a super badass way, like slaying dragons for chicks or anything, but in small ways. It's not that I won't back down on a dare - I'm not stupid (which can look courageous from time to time). It's just small choices that I make at the very last minute - I often figure if other people can do it (and no matter what "it" is, someone does it, and does it well), then I can too. This is why I frequently end up on adventures. I find that new experiences thrill me instead of scaring me, I love to meet new people, and I'm unafraid of leaving my junky car unlocked less a psycho killer lurks inside at the end of my dinner shift. In reality, courage is having an implicit trust in the plan of the universe and sacrificing the illusion of control over the outcome of a situation. Through this attitude I have uncovered a truth: the world is less complicated than we think. It is less evil, more open and friendly, and less judgmental than we have been told. In my adventures into the world around me, I have found landscapes to be less demanding than I thought, people to be more friendly, and infrastructure to be less challenging than I ever dreamed. Upon reaching the southernmost town in Chile on my first backpacking trip, my response was, "wow, that was easier than I thought it would be." The same thought occurred to me after riding my bicycle 1,300 miles through Alaska. Remember that next time just getting to the post office, or making that phone call that you should have made two weeks ago seems like too much work.

I find that although I am courageous in many adventure scenarios, other seemingly inconsequential events in my life lurk in the shadows, leaving that awful pit of fear deep in my stomach. Even though I have a somewhat menial job as a waitress, work scares me more than almost anything else I do. Perhaps it's my lack of understanding - we fear what we don't know - mixed with a healthy dose of truly psycho work experiences that has made me a tail-between-the-legs, yes-man employee that is a pale shadow of the strong, insightful person I am able to be outside of work. Currently I am in a healthy work relationship and excited at the prospect of being able to assuage the fear demons that still live in my stomach. How is this done? I'm not sure. But the path stretches out before me - a different type of adventure.