How often do we stand at the cliff of new beginnings and look down thinking about the peril that would find us if we slipped. Too many seconds spent counting the moments we don't even have the guts to live. Leaves fall to the ground off of trees after having lived their lives to capacity; they do not tremble from fear of simply being.
So we hold the hands of the ones we love; we compare our bravery to that of the person living next to us. Noticing the shake in our boots looks nothing next to our neighbor's steady ground. What we fail to realize is they house their nerves in the twitch in their tapping fingers. Courage housed in our bodies in various ways, never to be judged based on how our friend's carry theirs.
We look under rocks, search the sky for signs that tell us we are not alone. Of course we feel lost when other humans seem to have this way of life figured out. We lose the sense of invincibility we tend to when we're young. We think it's because we grow wiser, a little more tempered and modestly aged by experience.
But when we forget to take inventory of ourselves, we lose more than just our sense of carelessness and wonder. We lose our individuality in the contrast of comparisons to those standing next to us. For while our friend's tap their fingers or dance their toes in their shoes to shake their fears, we only see the brave mask they wear, and it makes us feel like we've missed the extra dose of vitality they seem to have had when our backs were turned.
But it's the tingling of nerves that makes life come alive off the pages and the screens.
That combined with the quick impulse to jump.
The "unsures," the "unknowns," the "I'm just winging its," and the "me toos" give us the life we are so terrified of losing. Because if everyone was sure and we all wore courage in the same places, there would be nothing to learn, no cliffs to make our heart fall into our stomachs, and no small comforts to bring us back into ourselves once again.