On Fear

You know how I learned how to dive? My swimming teacher pushed me into the pool. I’ve always been okay with diving until that one time when I was younger that I tried to dive into a 4-feet pool. Stupid, I know. And it was not exactly a rewarding experience. I ended up going home all dizzy, with a big bump in the middle of my forehead. It could have been worse, but I’m a lucky girl. Always around some kind of trouble, yes, but so far, lucky.

So then I had to re-learn diving. Or maybe I still knew how but just didn’t want to, afraid that my head will hit the bottom of the pool again (I still feel that way sometimes). I guess my teacher got annoyed that I was taking too long in that diving position – whining, pretending to be checking if my position was correct – so she pushed me into the water. Maybe for a while I hated her for doing that, until I got one of the highest grades in class.

Fear – it will always be there. It’s that thing that oh-so-creatively generates excuses in our heads for us not to dive into the water, no matter how much we know we want and need to. It is so creative, in fact, that most people in the waking world never get off from that diving position, still wondering (or pretending to be wondering) if their position is correct.