Fears

I have a fear of heights. Particularly a fear of being on ladders, with skinny steps. All that open air between steps just waiting to suck me into an abyss. I can do a step or two, but then the fear takes over. This fear has been with me for awhile.

Yesterday was a sunny Fall day in Eugene. As I was walking the loop around the RV park, I noticed a man on top of his RV sweeping the debris of fallen leaves from his RV. I thought to myself, "wish I could do that" as Minnie Minerva has been inundated with leaves from the tree that was so welcoming when I first moved in. Sodden leaves cover her top.

Minnie has a built-in ladder at the back which I have tried to climb on two occasions. Both times, two steps were my limit. The fear was too great and I had resigned myself to the fact that it was never going to happen. Plenty of people have never climbed onto the top of their RVs. I couldn't even buy a 6' ladder because I knew I would never be able to scale the top of that ladder. Just too high. Wind and rain would have to take care of keeping Minnie's top clean.

By the time I had made a few loops around the park, I watched another neighbor skimmy to the top of his RV and I watched him sweeping leaves. He had made it look so easy! Maybe I could do it as well. And so, for the first time I can remember, I climbed a ladder with no fear. The fear was just no longer there. But I remembered where that initial fear had come from, from a time when I was so young I have no conscious remembrance of it, and have only heard the story.

My father was up on the roof of our house and as a toddler I had climbed the ladder to follow him, my blond curly head showing up right behind him. His shock and fear were directly transmitted to my subconscious where they remained until yesterday. As I was climbing the ladder I remembered the story of following my father so I knew at one point in my life, there had been no fear of heights. This was not a fear that had come in from a previous life, but one that was a direct result from this lifetime. And now I could connect the fear and its origin.

There was still a bit of anxiety as I realized the roof was slipperier than I had anticipated and I did not have the proper shoes, I had no idea I would be up on the roof!, and then there was the question of how to get back down, but this was more problem solving and being cautious than having to work through any fears. The fear was gone. I still cannot believe how quickly it was just no longer there.

So, another example of walking through our fears has shown up for me. Our minds can build them up into such monsters that we can become powerless and become frozen in our path. I am going to try to remember this as I leap off into the great unknown and put to rest as many fears as possible, because some days there are so very many.