LOVE & LET GO: FACING OUR FEARS, CALLING OUT CREATIVITY AND MAKING NEW FRIENDS

Glass bottom gondola in Taiwan

 When I was young I had a terrible fear of heights.  I used to climb trees a little higher each time gripping the branches, trying to help myself get over this fear.  Slowly this practice helped me trust heights.  Well, except on the high dive at the public pool. That always remained particularly scary!  

I was glad that I managed to defeat that fear by learning ways I could love heights.  When I was 12 years old and flew in an airplane for the first time, I thought it was amazing!  I was still a little afraid, but the exhilaration more than compensated.   Plus, I was flying to a magical island called Bermuda, and that as a destination was a great motivator!

  

I still felt scared of heights but I was slowly learning to trust in my experience of them.  Well, except when my friend in high school and I were stuck high up on a ferris wheel at Mountain Park in Holyoke, and she began swinging our little bucket chair back and forth.  I felt so scared I thought I was going to faint.  But later in life, with another friend from college, I would willingly pay for and board a gigantic ferris wheel on the edge of a great lake in Chicago, IL.  That was very different.  Serene and fun.  I would also take up skiing in high school and get over the fear of heights sitting exposed on a chair lift with no safety bar and 300 foot drops.  Yes, I would clutch the side of the seat, that is true enough.  Especially on one chair lift in the Alps that was over 60 years old and had a little wooden seat.  It ascended over the cloud line.  

That is very high, if you know mountains.

My feet and the view through the glass bottom gondola.
Those are trees on the side of a mountain in a volcanic forest below.

A few years ago I attended a conference on Natural Healing in Taiwan to speak about the health benefits of meditation.  Meditation is a deep and profound spiritual practice.  Yet, there are so many other benefits that come along with getting to know your mind.  

Like encountering what terrifies you and learning to move through fear into joy.  

During a long session at the conference which I could not understand, because it was in Chinese and that is a language I do not speak, I slipped out for a few hours to explore Taipei.  I heard about a cool glass bottom gondola up the side of an inert volcano.  That was a trip I also wanted to take.  So I bought a ticket and got on board.  

A magical pagoda seen from the air
If I had not gotten brave enough to challenge and conquer
my fear when I was a child, I would have missed this amazing view!

And making some new friends!

 Strangers who became friends in mid-air

A new design of an old word

An artist who now lives on an island off the coast of Maine decided it was time to put a new stamp on LOVE for a stamp.  Literally.  So he designed for the US Postal service.  
Now his stamp and statues of his view on LOVE are world famous.

This little blog is about encouraging each of us to face what we are afraid of and continue to allow ourselves the freedom to explore ways to transcend fear, to move forward into embracing it and transcending it with creative responses that call us out of the fear and into the power of love.   Maybe we can actually make friends with fear by letting it still tag along for the ride on occasion but letting it know that it will not hold us back.


Enjoy.  Be Brave. Go Love.