Fearless is a big BOLD word.
I was reflecting on this yesterday afternoon as I was doing cow chores. I find that being with the cows and observing them I can relate human behavior to cow behavior.
I was in the barn loading the ATV with some hay for the bull and pulling some bales into the bottlenecked area in front of the feeder alley. I do this every few days as not to have to pull the bales as far to disperse them into the feeder at chore time.
The wind was gusting both through and around the barn and feeder areas. It was to the point of playing tricks on my hearing. I thought I heard a loud bang. Then I second guessed my thought. The mother cows began scurrying off the cement area in front of the feeder where they stand to eat. The recent rain and snow had made the muck quite slippery. Sounds of sliding hooves along with creaks and groans of the old tree posts used as support beams in the design of the feeder were being pushed by 1000-pound cow bodies.
I glanced out and down the feeder aisle to see two of the pregnant cows standing at attention with their butts to the feeder and their heads stretched out tall with eyes fixated into the setting sun on the ridge of tree-lined hill above the barnyard. Yep, that was the signal of a predator. Whether human, animal or machinery something was alerting the cows to danger.
The cow mothers were growling low and throaty signaling to their calves to gather close as danger was around them. However, the calves were not listening, still intent on running and jumping and playing calf tag as I call it. They were oblivious to their mother’s calls with potential danger at bay.
The calves were too young to know fear. I thought about humans. Were they born fearless too? Do the life experiences make us fearful? And when does fear begin in humans?
A very dear lifetime friend of mine has had a challenging time this past year. Everything in her life was turned upside down and inside out. This left her pondering who she will be going forward. What she wants her personal and professional life to look like. And even what she herself even really likes or dislikes. My heart breaks for her daily as she shares her struggles with me. Other than listening and praying for her I know there is nothing I can do. She must navigate these waters herself and I can only lend support.
I am so proud and inspired by her for getting out of bed each morning and tackling these personal issues. She is fearless in my eyes and yet she feels anything but this. She recently commented that her friends like me are fearless in contrast to her being fearful. She attributes being fearful in every aspect of her life to being raised in an overly protective home by her parents. She never went through the typical teenage or young adult rebellion. She was very compliant.
Why is it that she feels consumed by fear and unable to move on in the independence of her own life? And yet, at the same time I see her as more and more fearless as she tackles her new life. Do we only see our own fears? Does my friend not remember that there was a time in my life a few years ago that I was consumed by fear myself? That she herself had lent me sound advice on the topic?
Fear in my life was enveloped in my professional life. Frankly, it happened over a period of years, until fear kept me from moving forwards, it was paralyzing. An office that once felt like an extension of home that was a happy place changed in dynamics and became a place of dread to tread to five times a week. Each day the hands on the clock seemed to be sticky like peanut butter and jam on your fingers as I waited for the workday to end.
Each day I would look at the household budget, thinking, planning, telling myself today was the day I was going to retire early. There were aspirations on the horizon that I had kept putting off and I was not getting any younger. After decades of working in a field that was second nature to me but not my passion, I wanted to pursue those aspirations.
Each night as I grumbled, then fell asleep, to be awoken with nightmares in a hot flash, I would make another excuse to get up and trudge off to the office. Its environment was toxic to my very essence and was turning my stomach into knots so tight the acid of the mildest food would find itself winding up my esophagus. FEAR.
Fear of letting myself and others down. Fear of living in poverty. Fear of failing at my dreams. Fear of what people would think. Fear of hurting people that were hurting me. The list goes on. I had even lost my spiritual focus. I should have been relying on God and his power.
It took enduring an emergency surgery and then the birth of my grandson a few weeks later for me to realize I needed to look straight into the eyes of my fear of quitting my job. The fear had gripped me, and I had to rip myself loose of it. I needed to trust in free falling for a while until my feet planted me on a new path.
I thought the free falling would be scarier than staying in the toxicity. But, in that moment, as I closed the office door behind me for the last time, I felt such a release of fear. I breathed in lungs full of possibilities. God had been telling me that for the past three years, trust in him, he will supply. Sometimes you must leap with faith alone.
The minute I leapt and let go of the fear, God supplied the peace. I was so afraid of failing myself and others that I was, in fact, failing myself and others. I will not lie; life is NOT all sugar and spice and everything nice now. But the quality of my life is so much better. In turn my health is too. I am happier. Watching my grandson is a joy in my daily life with a flexible schedule to write and tend the cows. Now I save the budget analogies for once a month.
As I turn my attention back to the cows and what has spooked them, I see the fear in their eyes. I watch the cows gather in the calves and hover over them. I hear the distinct crack of a gunshot wafting through the air. That is what is causing the cow fear in this moment. They wait with ears up and alert. Protecting the calves by putting them in the center of a circle they have created with their bodies.
After a few minutes and hearing no other danger, they settle and begin meandering back to the feeder there they once again enjoy their barley and alfalfa hay dinner. The calves sense their moms relax and up they jump. They are off running and chasing each other around the barnyard. Calf tag has resumed and what a pure joy it is to watch them. They are once again oblivious to fear and living in the moment again.
A healthy amount of fear keeps us safe with the clarity to make better decisions. An unhealthy amount of fear is toxic to our health and will keep us stuck in place just like concrete drying around our ankles until we need a jackhammer to break it lose. If we could only be fearless all the time like the newborn calves.
“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.” -Judy Blume
