Fear is Natural

When I was a kid, I was scared of swimming. Scared of the deep dark water, hell I was scared of not only drowning, but drowning in terribly exaggerated ways. All of the living things that were hiding in the water wanted to get me. I was National Geographic savvy; fish with teeth like tiger claws, only sharper and paralysis inducing jellyfish, not to mention giant sharks with a sweet tooth for fat kids.

Ohhhh no, hell no. A million times no! There's no way I was going in there. What if I was the reason scientists would find a new breed of man eating creature and I was the man?! Did those yellow bordered magazines skew my tender little grey brain into paranoia, when all they were trying to do was write an interesting story? You bet your snorkel they did. Suit me up in one of those old ambient pressure diving suits. You know, the ones with the iron diving helmets and the big rubber suits from the 1800's! Yeah, one of those! I saw myself getting into the pool at the YMCA wearing one of those. Now that was swimming! Armed with my trusty spear gun, no underseas menace could stand a chance!

The turning point, aquatically speaking, happened when my dad was tasked with teaching me not to die in the water. Not swimming classes, but how to at find my inner killer whale and lose the fear. So, we're standing at the edge of the water at a resort pool. My little fingers are shaking, my lip is quivering and I'm pretty sure I'm about fixin' to either pee on myself and then faint or do both simultaneously. We look into the dark late afternoon water and he proceeds to explain that there's nothing to fear. He'd be close by in case I needed him, but there was no mistaking that I was going in there alone. In my mind, there wasn't a beast that man couldn't deal with. His might arms could unhinge the jaws of any Krakken, burst through any mountain, or even improve the orbit of the Earth because I wanted shade. There's nothing he wouldn't do for me. Except explain the basics of swimming. He said, "Let's practice breathing. Draw in once. Draw in twice. Draw in three times." I drew in a deep breath and I felt his hand on my back and his foot on my butt as I was launched into the deep end of the pool.

As my 7 year old body flew into the water like a lead lawn ornament, my breath flew out of me like the shuttle into space. I tried to kick, but it didn't help, my fears had gotten the better of me. I opened my eyes underwater and saw things through my fuzzy and burning vision that wanted lunch. A large spotted purple blow fish, pale red-headed sea serpents and shadows of the biggest teeth I'd ever seen were all around me an closing in. My only hope was launching myself up through the surface to call for help. I felt my foot touch something. The bottom of the pool! I pushed with all of my might and shot through all of those deadly critters, practically coming out of the water all together just long enough to shout. "I can't..!" Just like that I went back down.

I heard the sound of a muffled cannon. Loud and dense. BOOOOOM. I was surrounded by bubbles and through the murkiness, an arm pulled my up by my trunks. That was the most welcomed wedgie of my short life. All of the demons of the deep slunk back in to the depths as the rays of the late afternoon sun danced on the surface ripples.

So there we were, my hero dad and myself hanging onto the edge of the pool. "You, okay?" I was coughing a little and my eyes were full of chlorine. I looked around to see all of the sea critters looking back at me. The chubby old lady in the spotted bathing suit, the pale red headed teenage kid and all of the others, all concerned by the survival lesson. I answered with a smile and a nervous laugh, "Yeah, I'll get better at this, right?" As we shared this moment under the tooth-shaped palm tree shade, he looked into my worried eyes and said, "You're better than when you first went in, right?"

Fear is natural, but if I don't at least try, I'll never be better than when I started. Just keep going and those fear transforms into confidence. This goes for anything. Meeting new people, doing new things. Anything. Try it and you'll develop a richness in character that you didn't have before. Make fear work for you, don't be a slave to it.