“A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.” ~Michel de Montaigne
When I was an undergraduate in college I signed up to learn the Fundamentals of Modern Dance. My parents were less than thrilled.
While many of my classmates likely took such a course for an easy A or a chance to revisit their leotard-clad youths, I picked my dance courses with an unannounced and secret ambition to be an instantly amazing dancer.
This, I felt certain, was a sound place to rest my future livelihood upon.
At the beginning of each class we were told to travel around the room in as many different ways as we could to warm up. We could roll or leap. A slow walk, a sprint, or a cartwheel were all acceptable.
One day the teacher commented during this free form warm-up, “You can tell a lot about a person by watching the way they move.”
I immediately imagined what I must look like to this grad student.
Tall. Coordinated. Cautious.
I would drop to the ground for a roll across my bottom ever so carefully, bracing myself so as to avoid any sudden, jarring impact.
In the world of dance it is aggression and abandon that interest us. It occurred to me in class that day that I had a tendency to tiptoe. This realization began the slow and inevitable sinking of my dreams of being a yet to be discovered dance prodigy.
And, just as my dance instructor’s words implied, my tendency to be overly cautious as a dancer was representative of how I engaged in other parts of my life.
During my whole freshman year of college I visited only four places on campus—my classrooms, the gym, the cafeteria, and my dorm.
Looking back, this seems like exceedingly strange behavior.
I must have been trying to mimic the life I knew at my parent’s house, where my orbit was similarly contained within home, school, and sports practice.
In high school the furthest I strayed from this well-monitored agenda was to covertly buy junk food from the convenience store near my house or to stay home from swim practice to watch Oprah.
I clearly was not a big risk taker.
At one point in the second semester of my freshman year of college I discovered I was quite bored with this predictable and caged existence.
I remember sitting at my brightly lit desk in the corner of my dorm room, with my feet pulled up under me, and inspirational quotes on many tiny slips of paper all around me.
I’d just spent the last hour or more journaling, and I’d run out of things to write about.
My head felt dull and empty.
I stared into space and thought of a pin that an elementary school friend had given me that read, “Life begins when you get one.”
I’d always wondered if that pin had been a jab at my life skills as a fourth grader or if it had simply been a random trinket she’d passed on to me.
I felt frustrated and cooped up, perhaps in a way I had felt for many years.
It seemed as though I had much bigger wings than my little quadrant of a life on campus had room for. It was uncomfortable keeping them all bent and crumpled in that small space.
That night I had the idea to try something new. To break free. To soar.
It dawned on me that there wasn’t anything truly keeping me in those cramped quarters other than my habits, remnants of overprotective parents’ admonitions, and my own fears.
Soon after this revelation I went to sleep.
The next day my courage dawned anew. I would see the world, even if it killed me.
I did the riskiest thing I could think of: I decided to take the metro into the city.
I was pretty sure that by leaving the school grounds I was walking into treacherous terrain. My fear drew pictures of knife wielding, dementor-like beings who lived out at the fringes of my known world. If they didn’t get me I was pretty sure that my father would, when he found out I hadn’t listened to his directions to stay put on campus.
A little before noon I gathered my courage, an apple, and a water bottle and put them into my backpack. I noticed the day was overcast as I walked to the train.
Once on board I sat with the lumpy forms of my prized possessions clutched to my chest.
My heart raced. My hands were perpetually sweaty. I was sure I would be found out, but still, I held my ground.
It surprised me that I survived the metro ride without any harm befalling me. I got off at the Smithsonian stop on the National Mall. I was still frightened as I walked over to a nearby bench and sat down, gathering my wits about me.
Here’s what I saw. People eating their lunch. People jogging. At one point my breath caught. It dawned on me that the world outside of campus was just regular people doing regular things. I ate my apple under a gray sky that has forever been etched in my heart.
There really were not any monsters under the bed.
I sat for a while longer and then turned around and got back on the train. Heading home to campus I felt a wave of pride and relief wash over me. I’d done it. The real world was laughably more benign than the world I’d concocted in my imagination.
This heady success made me curious and determined to try more scary things. I began speaking up in class. I tried stand-up. I reached out to new people. I quit a job. I started a business. I’ve fallen on my butt in ways that I never would have previously allowed myself to in that dance class years ago. Through it all I’ve not only survived, but thrived.
What I’ve ultimately learned is this: my fears of the unknown are usually big fat liars.
Time after time I have tested these fears and found the world to be a much lovelier place than I would have guessed.
So go ahead and do the one thing that scares you. You just may find that the world is a kinder place than your imagination.
Photo by Kevin Poh
