Ready or Willing?

You’ve got the microscope out.

Underneath it, your fear lies on a microscope slide, ready for visual dissection.

You’ve been turning it around, thinking about it, thinking about how you’re thinking about it, and so on.

Wondering what will make the difference with it.

Pondering.

So much pondering.

You’ve devised solutions for it. Ways to overcome and trounce it mightily.

With just a little more courage, possibility, pain and a few other ingredients into the tincture, you’ll be able to step beyond it.

But for now, more study is required.

But is it?

Is more study actually going to make a difference? Is the problem really that you don’t have enough information? That you don’t have enough possibility that you can see? That you don’t have enough pain in your life?

You can wait around for those things to come. You can even take an active role in your life acquiring those necessary ingredients. It’ll take a little bit of time, but you can amass them until you are “ready”, whatever ready means.

Maybe ready just means willing?

Maybe all of the analysis, pondering and well orchestrated-thought is just delaying the thing that actually matters: acting in the face of your fear and doing what you’re scared to do.

If it wasn’t a matter of getting the right set of circumstances, feelings, thoughts and “ingredients” together, and was really just a matter of deciding now is the time and taking action, would you bother with all of that other stuff?

I wonder.

I see you arrive at this conclusion yourself.

And then I see you write it on the blackboard, along with all your other thoughts about your fear. Integrating it with the grand unified theory of overcoming your fear. 

It too gets wrapped up in the web that your fear spins to keep you busy.

It’s okay — fear is scary.

But be clear, when it comes to your fear, readiness is a function of only one thing: your willingness.