I once heard from someone that danger is real but fear is a choice. Dangling on a cliff like this, and I can tell you that danger is real but at the same time, you cannot find any fear in my heart. I cannot fully comprehend this also but I somewhat have an idea why this is. This is still somewhat of a mystery to me as well. A couple of guys took a picture of me and one of them told me that I was courageous or fearless. But if you ask me if I am fearless, I will have to answer “no” to that. It took me roughly 10 years before I started following my heart. 10+ years of working on monotonous jobs that I hate, studying things I hate, doing things that I hate, and living day by day hating my life. I lived in fear everyday telling myself I am not good enough, not talented enough, not born with the right genes, not privilege enough, not worthy, too painful, too much work, not worth it, and so on. When there is fear, there is suffering so for 10+ years, I have been suffering everyday by trying to live small, trying to not stand out, and trying to let life pass me by.
It is funny what suffering can do to you especially when such suffering is self-inflicted. Pain, broken heart, disappointments, failure, judgment from others, and so on barely has any effect on me. I have been through worse. All these guys crying, or begging a girl to take them back because a girl dumped them, sacrificing their self-respect for approval or validation from a girl, being insecure of me because the girl they like wants to be with me, and so on, I wish I can force them go in the right direction so they can see that I am not a threat to them and the only person that can save them is themselves plus the only person that can get the girl is themselves. They are their greatest ally and their worst enemies. Blaming other people for the girl not falling in love with you is kind of stupid, don’t you think? But I recognize that their pain or suffering is self inflicted also. Such suffering must be respected so that someday they can grow into a more loving person.
Most of our fears live in our heads, they live in the prediction of the future, from societal conditioning, but fear cannot exist in the present moment. Whenever I am doing something dangerous, there is no fear in my heart because I am enjoying and loving the present moment way too much to think about what is going to happen in the future. Fear is only an illusion, thoughts that are not real, and predictions of the future that have big probabilities of not happening. The greatest mistakes I made in my life is living in fear, and creating excuses so that fear can thrive and control my life. So now I choose to have courage- courage to love, courage to be compassionate, courage to be free, courage to follow my heart, courage to be understanding, and courage to not hate. It is when I have the courage to conquer fear, that I was able to release the future into all of its possibilities, allowing myself to be free.
Picture Taken From Mohonk Hike.