Fear is a beautiful thing, a natural reaction for caution. A sentiment capable of containing the unlimited potential of human nature with just one thought. One thought placed in the right place at the right time.
I stopped fighting my fears long ago. This is not to say that I am not plagued with fears of my own; I am. I just decided a few years back that rather than being incentivized into action one way or another by my fears, I would strive to understand the place and role that fears play in my life. Why did I experience fears of certain things, people and projects? What was the role that I wanted fear to play in my life? I think most people at some point or another weigh these questions.
Fear is meant to be paralyzing; it is a reminder of one’s own fragile mortality. The exercise of pausing and imagining the role fear played in my life emanated from a fear that perhaps I wasn't fulfilling myself by accepting mediocrity. I did not want to take a hard look inside my own Pandora’s box, where everything in it is fair game. Where the impressions which others have imprinted in my life will remain until my last breath; where I am my worst critic; where the dreams that I dreamt as a kid lift me up out of the churn of a mediocre life.
The truth is that when you are a high school dropout stuck in the streets of Southwest Houston one either sinks or swims. It really is that straightforward, no one is going to walk into your life to try and make things better.
You realize that life is not like high school. Nobody cares if you learned something new if you met anyone new if anything happens to you. It is simply just you and the world; with every day going by faster than the next. Just you, a sack of fears lumped into the body of an 18-year-old seeking purpose, seeking to be relevant.
Six years later, I am a senior at the University of Texas at Austin on path to graduation this May and (God willing) off to law school in August of 2019. People often ask me, ‘How did it happen?’ and ‘How did you do it?’ Being the wonk that I am, I typically feel tempted to give a long-winded response to their inquiry.
But in brief, the truth is that I stopped carving moats around my fears and I accepted their role in my life. I took the time to study my own past, where those fears had emerged and what those fears told me about myself. I disregarded fears over things that I could not control.
And before long, I found myself taking actions despite my standing fears and insecurities. I came to understand fear as a thing, something with substance capable of playing a positive role for caution and sobriety in my life. I came to see myself as a creature of fears who nonetheless has a beautiful life to live, a life deserving of purpose.
