The Beauty Hidden by Fear

Article in brief: The author shares with us how her snorkeling experience taught her to look at life from a different angle, and reveal the beauty fear hides.

Have you ever felt the ocean as it gently moved back and forth, as the world became a little quieter and the calmness of the ocean made you forget all your worries for a little bit? Have you ever experienced seeing a whole different perspective of life, a whole different universe?

As you adjust your mask and snorkel, and swim to another world, the only sound you hear is the sound of your own breath as oxygen rushes in and out of your lungs. You take calm steady movements as you drift through the water and your heartbeat begins to slow down a beat after another.

I would’ve never had this experience if my father didn’t push me to do it. Reason being is, all my life I was never the “daring” type; most things that are considered daring are terrify to me. When I think about my snorkeling experience and how beautiful it was -besides the fact that a shark could’ve rushed and grabbed me from the head- if I wasn’t pushed out of my comfort zone I would have never seen life from a different angle. I am not talking about the Sky Diving kind of courage; I am not even close to that amount of courage. I am talking about learning to take a chance and learning to try something new. It’s fear and courage that determines the fate of a new experience.

Courage: is that moment when you push yourself out of your comfort zone. It’s that time when you decide not to let fear stand between you and what could be a beautiful encounter. We often allow fear to push us backward instead of overcoming it with our determination. If you take a moment and think, you’ll realize that fear hides the beauty of this world, it narrows our vision to only see what our heart can take, to only see what is in our comfort zone rather than what is beyond it.

Yes we would rather be safe and stick with what we know than risk failing, but if we never tried we’ll never learn. If Benjamin Franklin didn’t think “outside the box” and let fear of failing stand in his way, electricity would have not been invented; can you imagine yourself without that invention? You could be the next Benjamin Franklin if you allow yourself to be courageous, if you don’t restrict yourself with what we call a comfort zone.

Get yourself out there and allow your true self to shine through. Ask yourself this question “When was the last time I did something for the first time?” if you can answer it straight away, you’re indeed a person who has courage as a trait. If not then you are capable of being that person as well.

Let’s start by eating that food we’ve convinced ourselves we didn’t like even before we tried it, let’s start one step at a time and teach ourselves to be different rather than fade between crowds of people. Let’s welcome new things with arms wide open to see how much beauty this world holds. Look deeply to what is around you, in a way you didn’t before. Change your perspective and before you know it, you’ll see more beauty than you’ve ever seen before.