Fearless Friday - Emphasis on Fearless
It's in the air this year. Neil Gaiman's wish for his readers this year was to hope that we would make mistakes. It included this line:
Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.
It reminded me so much of a bit from Eddie Izzard's second show, "Unrepeatable," in which he talks about going toward your fears. "I’ve looked at fear in a big way, because coming out you have to deal basically with the whole world going, 'Oh, you’re an abominable snowman,' and me going, 'No! Don’t think so! No…' And you have to deal with this whole fear thing, and I tend to go towards things that scare me now, I think that’s very positive - not anything, like leaping off a cliff onto spikes..."
For a day or so, I thought this was a British thing. And then @Chris_Ledbetter tweeted this from Bill Cosby: "Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it."
It's at least transatlantic.
So what do Bill Cosby, Eddie Izzard, and Neil Gaiman have in common? Huge numbers of fans and readers and viewers. But they have them because they did whatever they were scared of. Not only that, but they had something to be scared of: being a black man in the U.S. when Cosby got started in the 1960s was so not the easiest thing in the world, any more than Eddie Izzard's coming out as a transvestite was in the 1990s. Neil Gaiman isn't as easy to figure, but if you read his stuff at all, you'll know that he knows what our deepest fears are--not in the sense of horror movie, screamy, close-your-eyes, stuff-your-fingers-in-your ears, run-away-as-fast-as-you-can-(though not with your eyes closed) fear--but the deep down what's going to happen when I grow up, or what if I have no control over my own destiny sort of fear.
And the only way they have succeeded as they have is that they are open about those fears, they risked rejection by the world-at-large by making those fears public--The Cos and Eddie Izzard in a very personal as well as a professional way. But by being open about those fears, they do two things: they show those like them that they are not alone and because they are comedians, they allow other people to simultaneously laugh and understand, and when you are laughing at someone's joke and not at them personally, you can't be hating. I believe deeply that their honesty about who they are--their very willingness to do the thing they feared--is what brought them success.
Fear of big f*ing spikes saves lives; fear of what people will think of you if you reveal your true self and reach for the thing you most want keeps those lives from reaching their full potential.
That goes for writers, too. Jenny has a fabulous guest post on Sara Crowe's blog. It contains the lines, "You need the courage to believe you can keep writing through fear and loneliness, through disquiet and uncertainty, through success and trial."
May we all have the courage and may we all use it to do that thing we are scared of, that thing we want most of all.
Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.
It reminded me so much of a bit from Eddie Izzard's second show, "Unrepeatable," in which he talks about going toward your fears. "I’ve looked at fear in a big way, because coming out you have to deal basically with the whole world going, 'Oh, you’re an abominable snowman,' and me going, 'No! Don’t think so! No…' And you have to deal with this whole fear thing, and I tend to go towards things that scare me now, I think that’s very positive - not anything, like leaping off a cliff onto spikes..."
For a day or so, I thought this was a British thing. And then @Chris_Ledbetter tweeted this from Bill Cosby: "Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it."
It's at least transatlantic.
So what do Bill Cosby, Eddie Izzard, and Neil Gaiman have in common? Huge numbers of fans and readers and viewers. But they have them because they did whatever they were scared of. Not only that, but they had something to be scared of: being a black man in the U.S. when Cosby got started in the 1960s was so not the easiest thing in the world, any more than Eddie Izzard's coming out as a transvestite was in the 1990s. Neil Gaiman isn't as easy to figure, but if you read his stuff at all, you'll know that he knows what our deepest fears are--not in the sense of horror movie, screamy, close-your-eyes, stuff-your-fingers-in-your ears, run-away-as-fast-as-you-can-(though not with your eyes closed) fear--but the deep down what's going to happen when I grow up, or what if I have no control over my own destiny sort of fear.
And the only way they have succeeded as they have is that they are open about those fears, they risked rejection by the world-at-large by making those fears public--The Cos and Eddie Izzard in a very personal as well as a professional way. But by being open about those fears, they do two things: they show those like them that they are not alone and because they are comedians, they allow other people to simultaneously laugh and understand, and when you are laughing at someone's joke and not at them personally, you can't be hating. I believe deeply that their honesty about who they are--their very willingness to do the thing they feared--is what brought them success.
Fear of big f*ing spikes saves lives; fear of what people will think of you if you reveal your true self and reach for the thing you most want keeps those lives from reaching their full potential.
That goes for writers, too. Jenny has a fabulous guest post on Sara Crowe's blog. It contains the lines, "You need the courage to believe you can keep writing through fear and loneliness, through disquiet and uncertainty, through success and trial."
May we all have the courage and may we all use it to do that thing we are scared of, that thing we want most of all.