And that’s the thing about beginnings—I don’t have a reputation to protect or enhance. I am a beginner, and as long as I come with a beginner’s mind—open and ready to ask dumb questions, get dropped, beaten and left behind—knowing that just by being here, in the collective inexperience as these teens and twenty-somethings, that I am winning.
Fear must be accepted as part of the cost of admission to living life to its fullest.
Was I anxious about this new undertaking? I sure was. There’s no way to avoid the anxiety and fear associated with taking on a new skill or experience, whether it’s learning French or how to scuba dive. Fear must be accepted as part of the cost of admission to living life to its fullest.
Does this mean you need to go become a B.A.S.E. jumper? No, of course not. It means that by accepting the fear that comes with any new beginning, we keep ourselves pliable and maintain our ability to adapt. Aging is what happens when we begin to forego experiences that infuse life with a little zap of adrenaline. It’s worth remembering that stress factors are essential to growth. And those stress factors cease to be stress factors when we have fully adapted to them. If you are interested in continuing to explore the fullness of your abilities in life, you will take on new stress factors, either pursuing those stress factors within what you already do, or you will go outside of it to something new.
When I stepped out of the pool in 2010, it was because I had temporarily come to the end of what I could discover in it. I needed something new—which for me was something old, but so old it was new—and that was bike racing. One thing I've learned about this process of starting over is that I can either focus on the terrible, awkward, clumsy sensation of being a beginner and all that may go wrong, or I can focus on the excitement of knowing there's nowhere to go but up.
And in this new focus, I don’t have to win (although it would be nice); I am free to drop myself into the race like a surfer on a big wave trying to ride it out to the end. I’m either swallowed up or improved enough to chase something bigger—but that’s a story for another time.
Photo credit: Kato Bentley
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