Courage under fire

Courage is "facing the thing we fear most", according to Eleanor Roosevelt, so I went in search of that thing, writes Gerry Forde in this week's Southlander

Kids have no fear. They played the game at my daughter's school where the child is blindfolded and has to guess the object placed in their hands.

"Oh, spaghetti! Yum!" yelled the kid and stuffed his mouth.

Wrong.

It was worms. But he was fine.

I have an inordinate fear of being fined at the library. I was scarred as a nine- year-old when I realised I had a book overdue and cleverly covered it by jamming it back in the shelves. Mum had to replace the book.

So I went to the library with a heavy heart, hoping to face down the terrifying librarian. But she gave me a big smile and we chatted away until she struck me down with a simple statement, "There seems to be some money owing."

My hands went clammy. She worked the computer then turned back to me: "Fifty cents for a kiss!"

I stared. She stared. She realised what she'd said and we burst out laughing. It turned out that A Kiss was the name of the book I had put on hold. It's from a series called Fearless.

One fear down.

Then a new bed was dropped off and I was caught between two fears - that of saying no to my daughter, who wanted it up that night, and the fear of building something with my two hands.

I was afraid I would be disappointing her if I did it, disappointing her if I didn't.

So, I faced the fear. I broke down the old bed easily enough but during the construction phase my hands went clammy. Then a breakthrough, the base had simple screw-in legs. I had it up in no time.

The look on my daughter's face was priceless. Before I could stop her, she leapt in the air and time stood still as she flew towards the bed.

In that split second all my past constructions flashed before me: forget the rocking chair, I invented the rocking table, the lattice for my abseiling beans, a stop cart. She landed on the bed and it was rock solid!

I reckon that if we listed all our fears and then faced them, pretty soon we'd run out of reasons not to like ourselves.

» Gerry Forde is the Venture Southland regional identity brand manager.

- © Fairfax NZ News