You have heard it said that you should do something every day that scares you. For the last few years I have been dealing with infants and toddlers in my household, so every day was new and scary. Recently, I have discovered that the age old adage is in fact good advice.
I got a tattoo this week.
I always wanted one. By the time I was able to make my own decisions about such things I was luckily usually too broke to afford it. Luckily, I say, because had I have chosen an image to represent my late teens or early 20s I would most certainly regret it by now.
Not that others are not capable, it is just that when I left home I was pretty rebellious and angry.
I would probably have made the mistake of tattooing the name of some now long lost girlfriend, or my favourite band's image from the 1980s, either of which would have been monumental mistakes.
Now, it scared me to even consider getting a tattoo. It is permanent, it is societally frowned upon and sometimes (and more importantly) it is painful.
I was scared when I made the appointment and I was scared waiting the month for it to roll around, which seemed to me plenty of time to back down. I was so scared that I posted on Facebook that I was going to get a tattoo in order to make sure I went through with it. I was scared when I walked into the shop, and I was scared when I sat down in the chair.
Could you think of something that scares you that you could do? Every day, or even say once a week? What about public speaking, or bungee jumping?
There is an incredibly interesting program in the United States military right now which takes soldiers returning from Iraq -- especially heavy combat role soldiers -- and forces them to do adrenaline rising, risk taking, and yet mostly safe activities once a week after returning from combat.
So for example, they go bungee jumping, and white water rafting, and sky diving. It's usually something they have never done before is likely to scare them.
The theory is that these people have become adrenaline junkies, living in constant stress for the entire time they are in the operational zone. By teaching them safer ways to get an adrenaline 'fix' -- and also weaning them slowly off the need for stress and adrenaline --you integrate them back into the 'real world' in a safer way.
I imagine this will do wonders to minimize post traumatic stress. It will certainly teach them a safe outlet for the pent-up rage and fear that come along with adrenaline highs.
In a larger way the success of this endeavour would also show us something else; that fear can heal you.
Healthy expressions of fear are there for a good reason, and when we confront them, deal with them, overcome them, and figure them out we can become better people.
My tattoo experience was amazing for a number of reasons, not least of which was that it was psychologically and spiritually healing. Somehow, watching this happen, all of my passions, art, expression, writing, rebellion, merged into one thing and were given expression in a physical reality.
Because I was afraid of it, I put off getting a tattoo until I was totally ready to do it, and when I did it, it was just 'right' and instantly allowed me to do a lot of 'head and heart work' to reconcile who I am now with who I have been at different stages of my life.
Let me suggest to you that we fear things because they are important; we do not fear the trivial and so, besting that fear, we work through it and move beyond it. This is real growth.
It is not just about the adrenaline, it is about recognizing how you feel about things. Fear is not about what you think; it is about what you feel. The guy doing my tattoo jokingly said that it lets you know you are alive.
He might be on to something there.
We spend far too much of our time in our heads, criticizing, rationalizing, prioritizing . . . and there comes a time when you have to get outside of that and feel what you are doing. Perhaps you need to jump off a bridge with a rope around your ankle, or you need to watch a hypodermic needle puncture your skin 10,000 times, or you might just need to get up the nerve to say 'Hi.'
When the breath is caught in your chest, and it seems your heart is beating loudly enough for everyone to hear, when the sweat breaks out on your forehead, when that shaky feeling takes hold of you; you will truly know that you are alive.
More than that, you will be doing something that matters, truly matters, not just to you, but to the universe. It is in those moments when fear meets passion that creativity and art find expression. It is in the expression of our deepest held convictions, the ones that scare us, that we begin to create a world where we are truly being ourselves.
I think we really should try to do one thing that scares us each day.
It could be simple, or it could be complex.
It could change everything.
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