I’m going to tell you a secret.
For an “adventurous person,” I am the least adventurous person you’ll ever meet.
I am scared of everything.
I am scared of heights, which I happened to remember the other day when I was climbing up a steep, slippery trail at a national landmark with steep drops on one side and no handrails. My son and husband had no such fear, and as they bounded along together hand in hand, as I edged up behind them. I didn’t want Jago to see I was low-key losing my shit so I kept going ‘right behind you!’ and shooting a little thumbs up, while all but crawling up on my hands and knees.
I had envisioned reaching the lookout would be a spiritual experience. I would look down into the turquoise pools 500 feet below me and the jungle would whisper to me. Instead I stepped onto the platform on shaking Bambi feet, grimaced at the camera, held my son in a death grip and then got the hell off that platform and back down the mountain.
I hate spiders. I remember when I was living alone in El Salvador, and I closed the shower door and switched on the light to find a big furry tarantula spread across the door. It took me hours to get out of there, when a friend of Hugo’s finally came and trapped the thing for me.
I hate confrontation. My instinct is to agree, to assuage, to fawn, so I’ll avoid it at all costs. ‘Why don’t you hate confrontation with me?’ My partner will say. Sorry bud, it’s because I trust ya.
I hate driving up steep roads in a manual car. On the skinny colonial roads of Guatemalan townships that were originally made for donkeys and mules, not two-way traffic, I’m scared of getting my car trapped in a skinny space I can’t pass.
I hate spontaneous plans if they’re complicated or involve a complicated parking situation. You’ll have to ask me three times like a hail mary before I agree to a plan. When I’m there, mind you, I’ll be like this is amazing! We should do this all the time!
As you can see, I’m a hoot. It’s a wonder I have any friends at all, really. I am scared of quite nearly anything, sometimes even my own shadow when I’m turning off all the lights at night at home. I would like to blame it on becoming a mother, that after that creature shot out of my body everything in the world felt like a threat and it made me hyper-vigilant. And while it’s true, it did make me hyper vigilant, it was more the cherry on top of a 26 year anxiety pile I’d been carefully tending to all my life.
I overthink. I imagine worse possible outcomes. I doubt myself, constantly.
And yet, if you look at my life from the outside, one could argue I’ve built quite an adventurous life for myself. In another country, in a different language, I surf and I bike and I negotiate and laugh and argue in Spanish.
Here’s the thing, being scared of everything has one upside. It means I am ALSO scared of getting to the end of my life thinking; I really wish I’d done that thing I was scared to do.
Even though I drag my feet, hesitate, doubt, and run myself into the ground with my fears, I also know I have this tipping point in my soul. Anaïs Nin described it as: the risk of remaining tight in the bud, being more painful than the risk it takes to blossom. And when I hit that tipping point, the pain of being tight in the bud, I make moves. I move the country. I say yes to motherhood. Yes to climbing that terrifying climb. Yes to moving to that next level in surf or mountain biking. Yes to walking into a roomful of strangers I don’t know at a school thing for my kid.
I have applied this logic so many times in my life. Finally holding a tarantula in the Mayan ruins of Tikal in Guatemala, because I was having a once in a lifetime trip with my dad, even while I wanted to crawl out of my own skin and run forever. Starting a podcast when I hate holding the talking stick at parties. Moving countries. Learning to surf, learning Spanish, and now learning to ride. The fear of hurting myself, embarrassing myself, and failing is crippling. But the fear of not doing it aches so much worse at one point. The fear of going back to bed that night knowing I was offered a door to grow, to expand, to taste the edges of this life that so many don’t dare to- and knowing I backed out. I can’t stomach it.
You may have heard the saying: “life is for the brave.” Personally I think life can be for the perpetually sh*t-scared as long as from time to time, you shove yourself over the edge of fear and just do the thing. That is how I’ve stacked together a rather adventurous life, for a big giant scaredy-cat like me.
Maybe you’re not the one to throw your hand up and go first. Maybe you like to calculate risk-to-reward ratios to within an inch of their life. Maybe you’d much rather be selected last, at the end, when everyone’s gone home and no ones watching anymore. Same.
Here’s the secret, you do not need to be the most adventurous person on earth. You can turn down many things. As long as perhaps every fifth time you’re invited to do something that pushes you to the edge of your comfort zone, you decide to go for it.
When you stack those slowly, you’ll find you look back on your life and you’ve lived quite an adventurous life.
Original base piece from the Salty Newsletter.
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