by Jill MacGregor
When I think about fear…or it thinks about me and I respond…my mind goes immediately to this image of a blind many walking through a crowded airport alone with only his cane to guide him. It makes me want to hush everyone and stop them so they’ll look—LOOK! I’ll gesture madly, not wanting to interrupt what’s happening but needing everyone’s gaze to be like a laser on what I’m seeing.
Blind man in an airport.
He’s not hesitating. He somehow knows how to get to his gate. I don’t always know how to get to my gate…but I’ve got airport issues… He’s not bumping into people. In fact, no one seems to be noticing HOW AMAZING this is but me. EVERYONE, I silently communicate by flapping my arms like a crazy person. LOOK, my eyes wide, I make an exaggerated arched pointing motion toward the action that I need all to see. HOW, I gesture in my self-inflicted game of charades, shrugging my shoulders, shaking my head in disbelief.
It stuns me. This blind man in an airport. I feel like I always see him.
They say real bravery begins when you have a choice and still decide to do the right or hard thing. Blind Man in an Airport could have stayed home.
Fear and Bravery…now there’s a pair. Always diametrically opposed yet somehow linked like two girls at either end of the ropes of my personal Double Dutch. “Jump now!” they say as I nod my head in time to the ropes rhythmic invitation. Always working in unison, fear and bravery, they try to work the ropes so that I can jump in and find my cadence. Sometimes it takes a while…sometimes I think the ropes are going to smack me in the face if I pick the wrong moment to enter what looks like chaos. But the partners in crime, Fear and Bravery, have it all under control—as if they hear the metronome and are simply waiting for me to trust…and jump…and feel instead of think.
