The Fear of Moving Forward
I’d like to tell you that I’m not afraid of what comes next. Fear, after all, is anticipation of what could be, not what will be. Fear requires imagination.
Fear requires me to acknowledge all that I could lose, while hoping for the opposite outcome. Fear is borrowing pain from a future that may never be.
And yet fear holds me hostage.
I find myself at a crossroads in my life. I know that the road that has led me here is a one way street, a pathway that I have trodden that can never be walked again. Instead, I see possibilities spreading out before me; intricate, infinite, impossible to know for certain.
The roads of time and choice multiply, intertwine and blur into possibilities, both of success and of catastrophe.
And I struggle to complete the actions that I feel are necessary.
I have recently come into a peace in my life that has been very hard fought. I find a new serenity, a calmness, an opening of my soul to possibilities that have before been only dreams, and a deeper belief that things may become what I have long desired. Yet, I am afraid that by moving beyond where I am, I may lose this peace for a while, if not forever.
But I also realize that the peace I have found is really no more than the absence of an intense darkness. In reality, I am living in that moment between the night and the day, where possibilities manifest, and the world doesn’t seem as oppressive as it once was.
This time of the day doesn’t last long however. In truth, I need to step into the light now, and see if the hopes and dreams that have drawn me from the darkness are strong enough to walk in the light, stand in the sun and carry me to the next level of my purpose.
My fear is that if I fail, I will once again be without a sense of purpose, and that the darkness will find me again, claiming me once more as its own.
There is really only one way to avoid the darkness, and that is to step into the light, taking my desires to serve into the next level, and to truly discover if the potential that I see in myself is really there, or just the vain imaginations of a tired man who has believed one too many dreams in the darkness.
So I must make this move, even though I am scared of the potential loss of everything that I have gained so far.
Fear is a universal trait in our species; well, almost universal. But so is courage.
It is written that bravery is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act in the face of fear. For me, the time to act has arrived.
I have to step forward. I have to try to serve at a greater level and lose myself in that service. For when I move from selfishness into service, I move from fearful into fearlessness.
It’s time to move. I hope you will come with me.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
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