About Fear

As far as I can tell there are no exact qualifications for wisdom. Wisdom comes with experience and experience knows many forms. However, astronaut Chris Hadfield was blinded while tethered outside the International Space Station. So, when he says, “the danger is entirely different than the fear,” I’m inclined to listen.

I have good cause to be thinking about those words.

Last week, I took a tenacious ten-minute dip at my beloved town beach. We had been gifted an unseasonably hot day and that morning I built up a healthy sweat wrestling massive sail bags in the process of testing our inventory. Seventy degrees or not, believe me, the ocean remained fully aware it was November in Maine. Within a minute or two of emerging from my ice bath came the afterdrop, a tidal wave of cold that seeped beneath skin, muscle, and bone—straight to my core. It was an unmistakable reminder.

Where I’m headed, there will be no second chances.

That said, I am far from the first person to face braving such unforgiving waters. The realization of which has transformed my admiration for the bravery of fisherman, explorers, and sailors. Some of whom likely also set out on unfamiliar boats, alongside foreign faces, and towards unpredictable destinations. Many of whom had a fraction of the technology we now possess.

Nonetheless, contemplation of those thin margins has elicited more than a few momentary shudders. I must reluctantly admit fear has become a predominant theme marking the beginning of my journey. I believe in my decision, but belief alone has done little to stop the resulting flood of risk and uncertainty.

Fortunately, through sheer and unrelenting exposure I find myself increasingly subject to the truth of Hadfield’s message. While not my first brushes with fear, danger, and their often-paradoxical relationship, this experience does add vastly new dimension to my perspective and understanding of them.

With that said, what the past two weeks have made abundantly clear is that fear lives exclusively in the shadow of the future. Also, that it evaporates in the light of the present.

We’ve all been told, “Fear keeps us alive!” Hell, lately the fears expressed by others have at times succeeded in making me fearful of the possibility I have not been afraid enough.

However, I am starting to appreciate what’s missing from these sentiments, even as I am presented with threats of real danger. That being, just as we often discover no real danger was necessary to produce a fear, fear is not a necessary response to danger.

Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist has sold more than 150 million copies in 56 languages. Surely, there must be some truth to what he wrote.

“The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself”

The type of suffering makes no difference. To varying degrees, most of us recognize this notion has merit even if we haven’t had to the opportunity or willpower to actualize it.

In short, danger is what’s real. Fear is imagined. Danger is objective. Fear is subjective.

Fear is not a resolution to danger. It is merely a distraction or distortion. General or acute, it grows with inaction and uncertainty.

Fear is entirely removed from the process of recognizing, preparing for, and dealing with realistic danger.

I can’t take credit for the idea, but I am actively exercising it.

Two weeks ago, I stood trembling in my dock shoes at the base of the arrivals escalator in Portland Jetport. I was about to pick up a man from four-thousand miles away who I met once—at a bar. I knew next to nothing about him. Well, except that he struggled with English. And that he had turned my life upside-down. For all I knew, the guy could be a maniac serial-killer. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider it.

Two weeks later, every initial fear feels as ridiculous as it was misplaced.

How do I know?

If you want to get to know someone, try spending 8-10 hours a day, every day, squashed inside a cluttered space no bigger than the back of a short school bus. It won’t take long. I promise.

There have been very real obstacles. For example, has our communication been flawless? Nope! It mirrors Pareto’s Law, whereby I am usually left to interpret 80% of what’s meant by roughly 20% of what’s spoken. Same goes for Guillermo. We only stop to round things out when the consequences of getting something wrong are high. There have been many a confused and smiling nod, but it works.

Guillermo also has some pronounced idiosyncrasies. For starters, I’ve met few people as quick with a joke. He manages to be both detail oriented and laissez-faire. I’ve watched him rewire electrical connection because of the slightest suspicion in its quality and spill a half dozen or more pistachios while snacking in the process. He could be a case study on political incorrectness. “Puta Mierda” is practically his catch phrase.

Yet, despite his imperfections, I trust him and his judgement. That’s worth the most.

There are also the matters of the boat and our plan, undeniably the two other most important deciding variables in the preservation of my life.

By reputation the Hallberg-Rassy 42E is a stout vessel. Overbuilt with twenty-five thousand pounds of displacement, the keel alone is twice the weight of my twenty-five-foot boat. Hailing originally from Sweden, Inga has extensively cruised the Med, French coast, and made at least one Atlantic passage, ultimately arriving at Yankee Marina from Mexico.

But there’s more to sailing than the boat.

Grossly cluttered lockers, tangled messes of wires, old running rigging, relatively inexperienced crew, and lack of a clearly defined plan were just some of my causes for concern. Each contributed to a mounting burden of fear and tension, especially as time ticked down. Dare I mention we ran aground in the mud bottomed Royal River while performing our first engine test?

I say again, the danger is entirely different than the fear.

If it wasn’t, regardless my major sacrifices to get this far, I wouldn’t be getting aboard. Despite how it may seem, I don’t have a death wish.

Instead, I gained confidence in my ability to identify and neutralize the source of those fears with action. Rather than letting my emotions compound, I have been forced to exercise the muscle of calm, working to address danger in the present.

Lockers have been organized.

Electrical systems were rewired.

We connected two large solar panels and installed two new GPS antennas.

Rigging was replaced and labeled.

Our sails got a professional inspection.

Filters got changed and the tanks cleaned.

I received a certification in wilderness first aid

I stayed up late studying coastal navigation.

Guillermo taught me how to download GRIB files from NOAA via HF radio.

We sat down and made a real plan.

That’s probably the half of it. 

…

Last night, I sat in Inga’s main cabin. In my company were Guillermo, Blane, and Peter.

Blane is the fifty-eight-year-old, soft-spoken software engineer who volunteered as our last-minute, substitute third crew member. We were introduced after he overheard Guillermo and I discussing our list of projects while sitting on the same Brickyard Hallow bar seats which we first met. The following day, I practically ran into Blane walking into Rosemont Bakery as I was picking up coffee for Guillermo and myself.

Don’t ever tell me there’s no such thing as fate.

Peter, a thick-accented, elderly Swiss-Canadian gentleman, had made stopping by Inga his daily routine between projects restoring his own sailboat at Yankee Marina. His life story features amongst other things, walking from Alaska to the bottom of South America, doing geological research in the arctic, sailing around the world, building his own house, having his boat raided by the Feds more than once, and an occasional mushroom foraging trip through the Northwest Territories.

He had brought us a bottle of wine, a parting gift. He would be heading back to Canada in the morning.

In the light haze and long shadows cast by a couple dim cabin lights and a single lantern, we shared a few lengthy stories and some hearty laughs. Our work was complete. At least as complete as work will ever be on a boat. My face radiated with the lightness and liveliness which typically accompanies early stages of frostnip. Lost in the pronounced aura of camaraderie and surrounding stillness, I found myself feeling noticeably unafraid.

I am human. I know my fear is long from all gone.

I am confident my relationship with it has changed.

… 

As I write this, Peter has surely begun his drive back home to Quebec.

Tomorrow, we set sail.