“Always do what you are afraid to do?”
I have always been afraid to wear a bikini in public. Nah, not because I didn’t have the figure but because … well, that was just me… afraid to do anything that will not be consistent with my upbringing and previous acts. Filipinas wear a tapis to the beach or, at the very least, a two-piece swimwear which covers not only the valleys in the chest but also the mounds of both butts. And I am a true Filipina, am I not? No, I would still be afraid to wear a bikini even today.
In much the same manner that I never tried to push myself to write out my ideas even if I had always dreamed myself to be a writer because… a chemistry teacher, write about ideas? In a country where everyone is not only boxed-in but also neatly labeled, who wouldn’t be afraid to come out and say something? Just recently, when I announced I am going to attend a writing workshop, somebody asked me, “You changing careers or what?” Even with the “or what?” I still shrank and did not attend the workshop.
The same storyline has made me what I am today. I was in the second grade when I started scribbling and when I actually expressed hope that I wanted to be a writer, someone said, “With your intelligence, you should be a lawyer”.
Later, when I expressed again the same wish to become a writer, in my second year in high school, somebody said “You aren’t good enough in English sentence construction, you are better off in science.”
Just when I was about to graduate from high school, though, martial law was declared in my country and law schools were closed or were threatened closure, so I ended up a pharmacist. Yet, after graduation, I didn’t know what to do with my degree.
Thus, instead of being a writer, or at least a journalist, I ended up teaching chemistry. No regrets but I am curious. What would have life been if I pushed on and dared to disappoint everybody including myself?
Even so I have been writing. Yet I haven’t written about what I really want to write about. I am not even sure whether what I really want to write about is worth writing about. What scares me though is if I write about what I really want to write about, would it do any good? Would I be right about what I write?
There, I think, Emerson was right. The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency … I have been a teacher all my life now and I have always tried to be right and good. ###
Note: This blog is written in response to the prompt “Afraid to do” of #trust30. The prompt was this: Emerson says: “Always do what you are afraid to do.” What is ‘too scary’ to write about? Try doing it now.
