No Fear

No Fear

   My nephew is young and athletic, a bodysurfer moving steadily up the ladder to bigger and bigger waves.  At least, he was.  The other week, a wave grabbed his fins and ripped them off, first one and then the other, leaving him without the propulsion needed to either keep him ahead of the breaker or give him enough of a boost to pull out.  Surprisingly, a more experienced bodysurfer was right there, getting him away just in time and giving him a second chance as he saw what was about to happen.  His fins were the price, his sacrifice to the ocean, washed out and gone, never to be found ashore, as if the ocean was winking, the master teaching the student.

   This experience almost mirrored my dealings with the ocean, my cockiness of youth and immortality almost challenging in taking advantage of the ocean, that is until the waves decided to teach me a lesson as well, pinning me to the bottom, then picking me up and tossing me "over the falls" time and time again.  I was out of breath, inhaling salt water and gasping, my breathing now cut off (as an aside, nearly 20% of drowning victims have little or no water in their lungs, their epiglottis having gone into spasm and blocking them from breathing, as what happens when a piece of food or water goes "down the wrong way").  In later years, I realized it was a matter of respect and my lack thereof for the ocean, a lesson I needed to learn (and luckily learned early).

   We all have a period of no fear, be it looking over a mountain ledge or diving into a new cave.  Sometimes this appears in our youth and fades away;  with others, it may last well into their later years or perhaps never fade.  And this no fear attitude extends well past the physical.  We've seen people approach a new business with no fear, or decide to enter a relationship with no fear.  It is a necessary driver for as one ages, the more cautionary side moves in;  watch yourself or you could get injured, careful with your money, be leery of committing.  The voices become stronger and stronger helping us grow, helping us understand what we would call, commonsense.

   The other side of this coin is one of knowing one's limits.  Having a no fear attitude can push us beyond what we think are our limits, but age also is great teacher, allowing us to decide when that decision might hurt us should we decide to continue.  My brother mentioned this, watching lifeguards in training when he was younger, running along with them for several miles on the beach, then accompanying them as the ran up to the pier and out to its end, 1850 feet (560 m) away...then they jumped off.  My brother, already winded, looked over into the deep water, the waves crashing against the pilings, the long distance back, the lifeguard trainees already shrinking in size as they swan off, then decided to turn around and walk back down the pier to its beginning, a decision I would have also made.

   But the overriding issue here on having no fear is, I believe, one of respect, respect for your body and your life, knowing when something is perhaps beyond you.  This can come not only from nature or internally, but from another person as well, as former NBA star Shawn Kemp wrote in his book, Star Forward, talking about basketball great, Larry Bird:  "Larry taught me a lesson.  People that criticized Larry, Larry is getting old, his back is in pain.  So I go out, I hit a couple of shots on him, said a couple of words to him, next thing you know he is shooting 3s in my face.  He ended up with like 47 points."  A lesson...

   We never know how we'll react when faced with danger, when our survival instincts kick in.  Some of us will freeze and some of us will burst into action, taking over  (an excellent dramatization of such an attitude is the film, Touching the Void).  And so it is when we come to an impasse in our life...some of us will gasp and say "no way," while others will simply brim with excitement.  No fear.