Wanderlust

I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked. Every time I heard a sound of unknown origin or felt something horrible cohering in my imagination, I pushed it away. I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn’t long before I actually wasn’t afraid.

—From “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed.

Often when I’m landing in a strange country in the middle of the night I feel apprehension. Someone once told me that I am fearless, but in fact I’m often fearful—I just do the things that scare me anyway. Most of the best things I’ve ever done scared me at some point.

I just started reading Susan Casey’s The Wave, which is about some very scary big water. In it she has this epigraph from Leonardo da Vinci:

“Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern…Two contrary emotions arose in me, fear and desire—fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things in it.”

That about sums it up.