“Everything you want is on the other side of fear”- Jack Canfield

Remember growing up and having that one thing that would scare the ever loving shit out of you? It was the monster under your bed or in the closet, the fear of the dark, zombies or vampires (before they were turned into sparkly love interests), there was always that one thing that just made us shake. For me, I was always freaked out by the dark so I would have a night light, but because the world is a cruel, cruel place, sometimes that night light would burn out. And when it burned out, that’s when the bad nightmares would start. I remember one of my nightmares where I had giant bugs, which were in lovely Power Ranger like colors, and they were chasing me throughout my city. And the issue was that whenever I would touch one of them to fight them off, they would turn into people I know and I would end up hurting them. The dream ended with me in my kitchen being cornered by four of these bugs and no way out. Yes, I know that’s weird as hell but come on, I was like six.

I miss having dreams like that because those nightmares had the wonderful ability to never come true. Now, the boogeymen we were scared of have become responsibilities and bills. The dark has become the future that we are never sure is safe and the monsters under our beds are what we keep down there. What we hold to ourselves for fear that someone else might find out a secret we keep. The biggest question I have is when did this change occur? I mean for the deepest fears we had to change from monsters to student loan debt is a pretty drastic change, to say the least. I’d say this change is kind of like how as you are growing up, you look at yourself in the mirror every day. You never really notice the fact that you have aged until it’s brought up. WE don’t know that our biggest fears change until we really stop to think about it.

I have only a few major fears in my life: the fear that I am not good enough, the fear of losing the ones I care about most, opening up, and clowns. Seriously, what the hell? These are what my fear of the dark turned into. Now I have already talked about my issue with being enough, and the fear of losing the ones I care for most is a very common fear that people have. The problem comes when we let the fears we have to stop us from doing anything. Like the quote I have leading this article, everything we want and everything we think we could accomplish in life is on the other side of fear. I am scared of opening up to people because the ones I have opened up to in the past have left. And I find it much easier to act like I don’t have a heart because then it is much harder to break. I am scared of opening up to others, and if I am being honest that is hurting me in the long run. It makes it so the relationships I have with people are not as trusting as they otherwise should be. And that is on me. That is a fear I have yet to overcome. And that is okay. Fear is the one limitation we have in our lives that can keep us grounded. Because sooner or later, we face that fear. We take that fear head on and come out the other side better than before.

Anything we take on in life has the risk of being a leap of faith. Yes, sometimes you will fall and hit the ground hard. But that just means that the next time you face that cliff, you have a running start on it. Leap. This week marked the first week of classes for a lot of us, and if there is one thing we can’t be afraid of, it is that we can not be afraid to try. A new year of school is always terrifying, new people, new classes, there are tons of things to be scared and stressed about. But above all else, we still have to try. If we are too scared of that, then we have lost already. You can take that leap, just don’t look down.

The monster under your bed waited this long to get you, make him wait a little more. Go be great.