Run Toward the Roar

It was a fairly typical mid winter day. Although the chill in the air was biting, the snowfall was light for Edmonton at this point in the season. Thinking back, it must have been a weekend, as my play date with Rom, short for Romulus, was in what was the late morning.

Mom had dropped me off at his house and his mother had let us go out back to play. I don’t remember his house much, or even that much about Rom, other than that he was a roly poly, friendly, and somewhat outgoing kid that I became friends with at the catholic school I attended some fifty three years ago. We must have been around six or seven.

After rendezvousing at his house, we set out to play in his backyard which, unbeknownst to me at the time, let out onto a clearing backed by the Saskatchewan river that cut through the city of Edmonton. After doddling a short time in his backyard, we soon were exploring the thicket beyond his yard, looking for things to do.

As the snow wafted down lightly, I saw workmen in the distance. Construction workers were commiserating, pointing in this direction and that, moving things around and otherwise making plans for their project. I called Rom over. For a while we just spied on them, watching from a distance. They were oblivious to our presence.

Soon, one of us, possibly me, came up with the bright idea of throwing rocks at them. We would toss a rock at them and duck down to see if they knew where it came from. We did this a few times, until a couple of the workmen suddenly turned around and started running toward us.

We both hightailed it out of there with all due haste. We ran through thickets and frost on the ground just as fast as our little legs would take us. At one point, Rom’s shoe had a malfunction of some sort, perhaps it fell off or his laces had come undone and he stopped to fix the problem. After just a few seconds of imploring him to come on, I decided to keep running. Why I am not sure, but I remember being truly terrified of being caught by the workmen. I was in full flight.

As I finished tearing through the thicket I came to a clearing. I stopped briefly, as the landscape had gone from thicket to snow so instantaneously. I could hear raised voices behind me which only increased my level of fear to an almost fever pitch. I pushed out into the clearing. At first there were several inches of snow, but as I continued on the surface of the ground became hard and flat. I looked back to see if Rom was there. From a distance of about sixty or seventy feet away I saw Rom and the workmen together, standing at the edge of the clearing, yelling something at me and waving frantically.

Aside from being in full flight mode, I was miffed at why Rom was with the workmen. "They must have caught him," I thought to myself. And I was miffed at what they were yelling at me. I was too terrified, however, to stop and try and listen to what they were yelling and kept scrambling across what I could now see was ice beneath me, occasionally looking back at Rom and the workmen on the shore of the Saskatchewan river getting smaller and smaller.

Somehow I made it to the other side of the river and made it to the house of a colleague of my mother’s that worked at the University of Edmonton. She called my mother and let her know what had happened and that, although wet and cold and scared, I was fine.

My experience of getting into trouble and running across the Saskatchewan river as a boy is a story I have wanted to write for a while, but had not figured out a good “hook” for. A “hook” is something that ties the story in with another idea that can give the story greater meaning. I hadn’t found that meaning until recently, in a conversation with my leadership coach at the Henley Group.

In conversation with my coach, we were talking about fear and how it can drive bad outcomes. I agreed with enthusiasm and started relating my story of how my stark fear caused me to run across the Saskatchewan river. After reading Warren Bennis' On Becoming A Leader, I had been ruminating on how I think our latent fears unconsciously and negatively affects our decision making, individually and as a country. My coach enjoyed my story. I mentioned that I had wanted to write it as a story, but that I had not found a hook for it, something that would give it resonance beyond the terror I felt running through the snow.

My coach, who I have come to see is a pretty amazing guy, told me the outline of a story called Run To The Roar he knew. It immediately gave my story meaning. Essentially, the story outline is about the way lions hunt on the savannah. The older male lion with his full mane, from a distance, will approach its prey on the plane and roar, scaring its prey into the bush where the female lions stealthily lay in wait.

The moral of the Run Toward The Roar story is that, in life, when one is fearful, rather than running from the feared thing, we should turn and face our fear...and run toward it, not away. In this story, we can see how fear causes the lions prey to run from the savannah and into the waiting jaws of the queen lions, rather than move to another part of the savannah. His story was an almost perfect match for my story, giving it the hook I was looking for.

The lion story is really a story about our need to face our fears. It is also a story about how not facing our fears has the potential to bring about disaster, or at the very least unintended and/or bad outcomes. Although I did not know I was running across a river at the time, it was my fear that propelled me through the thicket and across the river, unknowingly risking life and limb in the process. I was the prey running toward the waiting queen. Even if I had gotten a spanking for my hijinx, it would have been a far cry better than falling though the ice and the calamity that would have befallen me and my family.

Next time you are in the grip of fear STOP. Calm down. Think. Strategize. Maybe even pray, but confront your fear. While your fears may not be as scary as being eaten by a lion or apprehended by angry construction workers as seen through the eyes of a child, understanding them can be an opportunity for learning and growth. It can save you from unknowingly making bad decisions, or decisions that can have serious, perhaps even irrevocable, consequences. Run toward the roar, just be sure it is not the roar of the icy river pulsing beneath the ice.

A Final Note

After a fair amount of self-reflection on my life as a child in Edmonton and what may have been going on with me that caused me to be so very fearful of the construction workers, I have come to a conclusion. It is a conclusion that reinforces the notion that often it is the things perhaps unbeknownst to our conscious mind, namely uncertainty and confusion and latent fears, that can be the spark for runaway fear and cause us to make bad decisions. It is why confronting, understanding and exploring, our fears is so necessary and helps us make better decisions. Although I will not take it on here, it may be my next story.

Addendum: my 89 year old mother's recollection of the events described above can be listened to here.