If you find yourself crossing the River Styx, tradition would have it that you’re going to be scared. Fear itself, though, is a curious thing. We believe that our fear protects us in this Darwinian World. That’s why it’s perfectly reasonable to abstain from leaping off a fifty-floor building or throwing yourself in front of a train as it races by. Protect yourself.
And there’s a deeper level to fear - something beyond just a survival instinct. There is fear that wants to protect our self-image, what we believe about ourselves, and almost doesn’t want to know what we could achieve. It holds us back. There’s a line. The line isn’t drawn in ink - it hums low and constant, like something you’ve learned not to touch.
But I’ll state publicly the secret that fear is just a self-imposed cage. A powerful cage: fear is one of the most powerful forces I’ve experienced. But I’ve also experienced that it is terribly fragile, too. Because what is more powerful, more potent, is courage. You only need one drop of courage within a lake of fear.
And courage is a real, palpable thing. The reason that it is stronger than fear is because fear has no substance until it is obeyed. Until it holds you down. That's why you only need that single droplet. Fear feels heavy because it teaches you to stay still. Courage feels light because it asks you to move.
Naval Ravikant says that “whenever we say we're going to try to do something or try to form a habit, we're wimping out. When you say, "I'm going to do this," and "I'm going to be that," you're really putting it off. You're giving yourself an out. When you really want to change, you just change.” I've been there. I've been the guy giving myself an out for 34 years.
Here’s why I preamble: for many years I have desired to keep a personal blog. I would think of it as a long-held ambition of mine. I use the language “an ambition of mine” sparingly because if it’s been an ambition for a long time, then to use the word “ambition” is partially self-effacing because the counterbalancing part to ambition is sacrifice. And to claim to have ambition yet to give no sacrifice is to really have nothing at all.
Yet, staring out at the vastness of a white screen and a keyboard asking yourself am I actually that interesting, or is it now that I don't have an excuse to keep all my thoughts in my head where they feel safe that I’m going to realise that I’m a big fat fraud - is scary.
Perversely it feels nice to be scared and afraid. Because then your identity can stay ambiguous. So long as you don’t act, you don’t have to find out who you really are. Look at the title of this blog post: “Hello, World”. Despite the fact that I like to believe that I am a whizz for naming things - be it companies, bands, products, whatever - here I find myself ripping off Brian Kernighan and being what I would call pretty pedestrianly unimaginative. It's at this point that I realise that perhaps I do start writing and my fear that the writing is mediocre and weak is undeniably mine. I cannot hide any longer.
But I can still make a choice - a choice to refuse to hide. To simply have the courage to take action. Because fear thrives in ambiguity. Action forces definition. I choose definition. I’m not scared. I choose freedom instead.
So then, actually, I think “Hello, World” could just be the perfect choice for this piece. It’s the MVE (Minimum Viable Expression). It’s not trying to be profound, it’s just saying " Hi, I exist and I'm doing this now.”
Now I decided to give myself the gift of being fear-free and writing this blog. And I intend to keep giving myself that gift across all other facets of my life, as and when I can. Facing the reality of that mirror can feel a little disjointed, perhaps previously in life I wasn’t at a point where I could really face it. This doesn’t cost me anything to write in terms of time, or money, but it does cost me the ability to imagine myself as “someone who might write someday”.
Dolly Parton says “Find out who you are, and do it on purpose.” I choose to cross the Styx, I’ll cross it every day. That’s how I’ll find out who I am.