The Presence of Fear

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself" - FDR

Quick history lesson for those that don't already know: President Roosevelt said this during his inaugural speech. It told Americans that no matter how dark of a time we go through as a country, we will in essence survive. That's my quick interpretation here's what he said...http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/

So anyways this phrase has been  going through my head a lot these past couple of days. As I've explained in my bio a large part of my life is devoted to long distance running. That means that the part that's not is usually devoted to rehabbing the injuries that I derive from said distance running.

These past few months I've been slowly but surely nursing my Illiotibial band back to health. Originally I hurt it all the way back in November during NCAA regionals--and then the following weekend I ran on it during NCAA national cross country championships.

But that's a different story for a different post. The here and now is about indoor track. I have a huge conference meet tomorrow and I've been nervous for....days. No joke. Its just that all winter the only thing I could do was swim and so I'm not exactly where I was (physically, mentally) during Nationals. It's more than a little frustrating.

My coach said something to me yesterday that really helped things click a little bit. He said he'd been thinking a lot about this and figured out what my problem is. It wasn't as I had been thinking these past few weeks a lack of self-confidence. What he made me realize is that it's a fear of failure. I fear that somehow my legs which I do still have full confidence in, will somehow fail me in a race.

So I've been thinking a lot about the definition of fear, the meaning of failure. What I've been terrified of these past few days is nothing more than my own expectations of myself, my own pressures. There's a fine line between lacking confidence and fearing failure. So what does it mean to fear fear as FDR so cryptically pointed out?

For me it means that most likely our deepest fear is that somehow our insecurities, our inadequacies, our failures ,will catch up with us and that we will disappoint not only ourselves but the people around us. But what it also means is that fear is what we make it to be. It's not that I don't believe I can run like I used to. In fact, I know that I can. I know that when my heart, and my mind, and my legs all get together once again it will be nothing short of an unstoppable force. The only thing blocking that is my intense fear that I will come up short.

It's something incredibly personal-spiritual even- for me that I'm slowly but surely making sense of. Re-evaluating my worth as a person and not just a runner, re-defining why exactly I love to run and why it means more than just winning races and getting medals.

In the end I think its about learning to run faster than your fears.  If you learn to overcome your fears there is nothing standing in the way and you're free to chase your dreams down that  homestretch.