You can't be brave unless you are scared

Eventhough I'm a pretty laid back person and generally have a very casual attitude about most things. This comes at the expense of knowing that I have taken extrodenary measure to control as many varibles as possible. It's not that I portray a fasade of perfection or anything. But I have always felt like I could keep a lot of balls in the air and very rarly loose track of one. Well now here I am with all of my balls in the air and my hands are tied. So now I have no idea where my balls are or where they are going to land. It's very scary for a guy to not know where his balls are, beleive me!


This morning I was reading an article by Tim Deboom in Inside Triathlon. The article was basically about his discision to retire from professional racing. Tim is a 2X Ironman Champion and the last American to win in Kona. The article struck me because it's message has far more to do with facing the challenges of life than triathlon, at least for me. Like him, I'm at sort of transitional stage in my life. In my last blog I spoke a little about my struggles with the aging process. As we transition through the different phases of life there are several blind corners that can be pretty scary. In the article Tim talks about a card that his dad gave him that he always carries. The quote on the card really hit me "You can't be brave unless you are scared". The fear of what is to come is something I have given a alot of thought to lately. When I was younger, and believe me much dumber, I didn't seem to have much fear. Instead I thought that since I didn't know what was coming I didn't know what to be afraid of, So I usually jumped in both feet. This has sometimes been a bit foolish, sometimes very rewarding and a few times very painful. Most of the time though I was not really scared, maybe a little aprehensive but not scared. Lately, in all honesty, I've found myself feeling scared. Scared of what's to come around this blind corner. The stakes at this point in my life seem so much higher than they ever have before. All decisions seems to have such long lasting implications. I guess from a mathematical perspective they do in relative terms. Since my life is now more than 1/2 over everything takes on bigger relative weight. 10 years relative to a 80 year life (12.5%) seems small but 10 years of a 30 year life (33.3%), you get the picture. Another quote that Tim talked about in his article comes from the movie "The Shawshank Redemption" "Get on with livin or get on with dyin" So as I get on with livin I will do so bravely, because I am scared.