Episode 105. You Have to Be Afraid

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “You Have to Be Afraid.”

Fear is the only real adversary we have in life. And in a way, it's the only thing you will ever have to face. But ironically, I think it's also the gateway to paradise. What would we be without it? Fear forces us to either crumble or to conquer. It's your birthright to be afraid. There are many ways to be great, but one of the most beautiful ways to be great is to be courageous, and you can't be courageous without fear.

By most objective standards. I've had a pretty good life with a relatively trauma free childhood, and yet I feel like my life has been a never-ending line of fears for me to overcome. I used to be afraid to swim in the deep end of the pool. I used to be afraid of spiders. I used to be afraid of girls, and I used to even be afraid of fireworks.

Those are all small things, but I'm no longer afraid of them. No matter who you are, whether you have had it easier or whether you have had things rough, fear is the same. It is painful, and it will stop you in your tracks. It's a force so powerful. It can keep you in a cage your entire life. Fear is fear.

Whether you're on the frontline of a battlefield or seeing a rattlesnake for the first time, fear does not care if you're rich or poor. It treats most everybody the same way. I really don't resent that. I have to live in a world with so many things to fear because without it, there would be no courage.

And if there was no courage, then I don't think there would be very much to admire about people. War movies would have no depth, people would not grow, and we'd be reckless and foolish. It is kind of the same as darkness in the sense that if there was no darkness, there would be no light. A world where nobody has to fear anything sounds like a great political slogan, but I honestly don't think it would do us any good.

Fear motivates us and forces us to do more. Besides even if you were able to remove anything that ever scared you from your life, you would just find new things to fear. Whether we like it or not, we're made to be afraid. But what if you could make a world with nothing to fear in it? I wonder what the world would look like.

Well, there's plenty of books out there that do a pretty good job of portraying it. Uh, the ones that come to mind would be a brave new world and the giver in those books, they removed pain, uncertainty, and danger, but they also removed intensity meaning and individuality. A world without fear is sterile, meaningless, and robotic.

If we wanted to all be automatons and live in a perfectly predictable machine-like society, then maybe that'd be a good thing. Fear doesn't always need to be conquered, though sometimes it serves us. It keeps us from doing things that might kill us or embarrass us. If my little daughter didn't learn to fear falling, she may be dead.

She still climbs on everything, but she's learned to be cautious. Shortly after I got divorced, I moved into a small house with a flight of stairs. The first day I brought my kids over, my littlest one, managed to fall down the stairs no less than five times. Now. I truly tried to keep her off of them, but with all of the moving and commotion going on, she just kept on finding ways to sneak up there and each time she came rolling down.

She'd run up to me and just clutch me and terror, for better or for worse, she never did stop going up those stairs, but I can tell you that since that first date, she has never fallen down those stairs again. She finally learned the caution she needed to begin with. A healthy amount of fear for some things is right.

Sometimes a situation calls for courage though, and even though there are a lot of things we can avoid in life and even should avoid, there are a lot of things that we can't avoid without ultimately paying some kind of penalty. The penalty we pay for avoiding those kinds of fears is usually stagnation.

So fear in the right context, I think is actually something that we should embrace. Being afraid teaches us what calm is. It's the catalyst that helps create strength in people. I think we sometimes allow ourselves to get so overwhelmed by fear because it makes us feel so hopeless. But remembering that it's a kind of pain that makes us more capable, gives it purpose, and when discomfort serves a purpose, we can tolerate a lot more of it.

Resilience to fear doesn't come from a natural wellspring of bravery, but it comes from the courage to face those fears long enough to make peace with them. Sometimes all we have to do is to tolerate the fear long enough for it to subside. So let yourself be petrified as fear begins to envelop you just keep walking.

Don't look back but press on. When you walk through that fire, you'll become a new person. And in order to transform into something more than what you are, it's something you have to do. As a father of three small children, I get reminded every day of how afraid we all come into this world. I watch them recoil at the very idea of doing things that they're afraid of, but I also have the privilege of watching them face those fears as well.

Whether it's learning to swim, learning to ride a bike, or learning to sleep with the lights off. It is a pretty rewarding thing to watch. Fear makes for growth and we wouldn't have a very interesting story without it. There are naturally brave people out there that don't seem to have much fear to begin with, but I almost pity them because life without fear would be less rich, less fulfilling, at least, I think.

I hope we can start to see fear through different eyes and appreciate what it has to offer us because fear is the price to be paid for a good life. This is Skipping Stones - “You Have to Be Afraid.” You can find this podcast anywhere you choose to listen to podcasts. For more information about me, feel free to visit skippingstonessr.com and if you enjoyed the show, please like or subscribe.

If there is a topic you would like me to speak on, please feel free to email me at info@skippingstonessr.com. New episodes will be released weekly every Monday.