I glance down below my feet and my gaze catches on the concrete slab, partially covered in weeds, over ten feet below me. I’m hyper aware that if I step one foot backward or forward that’s where I’d land—that dirty, tan concrete peeking out between the grass and cinder blocks underneath the scaffolding we’re on. I’d get banged up on the way down from other walk boards, the other pick, and the scaffolding itself, but ultimately I’d land there. I’m also hyper aware that the walk board I’m on, on the top level of scaffolding, wobbles just slightly every time I take a few steps in one direction or the other. Then, I’m also aware of the two other guys on the scaffolding with me and wonder if we’re all distributing our weight appropriately and if they’re thirsty and if they have water bottles up here or if they’ll need some. I dropped mine a while ago. I can see it in the grass below me. My body is tense, my mind racing.
But then the crew on the ground hands up a full sheet of siding and it’s coming toward me, so I pick up the nail gun with my left hand and grab the siding with my right. We line it up with our chalk line, I lean out over the edge of the scaffolding and start to nail it in. It’s a matter of seconds before my half in nailed in—just pull the trigger and punch the gun against the siding. I hand the gun to the person next to me and he nails in his half. It’s an easy enough process and at no point during it do I have time to be scared. I have to focus. It’s the minutes in between nailing in the siding when I have a chance to breathe and look at my surroundings that I find the time to get nervous.
It’s unrelated, though—the fear and the actual work I’m doing. It’s a separate entity in my mind and it can be shoved back and swallowed momentarily when a task is put in front of me. This is a new thing for me—this compartmentalizing. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I never knew I could do it. The first day I got up on the scaffolding at work, I would noticeably jump every time the nail gun went off near me. Sometimes I would scream. By the end of that day, though, I’d learned how to use it and was, well, not awesome, but not terrible at hanging siding.
I think that was the first day I realized how much I was growing and benefiting from doing this labor that is, at its core, meant to benefit others.
The project we’re working on is a transition house for homeless men to live in while they’re transitioning into the workforce. Just another one of Tear Down the Walls’ awesome endeavors I’m glad to take part in.
So, the more we’ve worked on it, the more I’ve become acquainted and comfortable with the hard work it entails and, subsequently, the fear that sometimes is inevitable. What’s awesome, though, is realizing how small my fear is beside the importance of what we’re doing. Also, it’s awesome to realize that, by trying something new that admittedly makes me nervous sometimes and is exhausting, I’ve learned so many new skills and I’ve learned how to identify tools I would never have known before and I’ve learned more about what I’m capable of. I love that fear can’t hold us back from these things. And, if we don’t let it hold us back, we can grow so much.
I guess my point here is that we should try new things and should not be scared to do so, which is a pretty common idea. But when it’s happening in your life and you’re watching yourself grow and become less afraid all the time, it’s a completely new experience than hearing about it from someone else. So, just try something new—even if it’s standing two stories off the ground, getting sunburnt, covered in sweat, carrying a nail gun and siding across wobbly scaffolding—because there’s so much untapped potential in each of us that it’s a disgrace to miss out on it.
