Sunday, July 16, 2006

When I look back on the years since I left college and try to sum up what I have learned, it is precisely that: not to fear change, nor to expect my life to be immutable. All the good things that have happened to me in the last several years have come, without exception, from a willingness to change, to risk the unknown, to do the very things I feared most. Every poem, every page of fiction I have written has been written with anxiety, occasionally panic, and always uncertainty about its reception. Every life decision I have made—from changing jobs to changing partners to changing homes—has been taken with trepidation. I have not ceased to be fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me. I have accepted fear as a part of life, specifically the fear of change, the fear of the unknown. I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: Turn back, turn back; you’ll die if you venture too far.

Erica Jong - What Do Women Want? (1998)

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood

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