Fears + Ladders

"You have to face your fear of heights, to reach the startling beauty of high places." - Jamie Meyer

I used to be terrified of ladders. Not heights. Just ladders. 
There never seemed to be anything quite as unstable as a ladder. The potential it had to collapse or fall over. Or the precarious way in which my size 9 feet were too big for the rungs.

A ladder on a moving boat is the epitome of ladder dangers. The rungs are thin, slippery and the boat could make a movement at any moment. And whoosh, overboard, laughs. 

There was a time when I would not have imagined myself climbing such a ladder to get to the Crows Nest. I would have seen only my fear and not what I could possibly see from up there. 

As life would have it, a man I knew all but challenged me to join him in the Crows Nest. On a boat that was cutting through the ocean on a mission. I did laugh out loud, only a moment before I found myself two rungs up, wanting to meet the challenge. The ladder and my fear completely forgotten. 
The fear was irrelevant and paled in comparison to everything that waited for me at the top. The miraculous view that reached the horizon and kept going, the breeze, the feeling of flying over the water. 

Suffice to say, I have climbed every ladder since.

When we find ourselves in fear, it is helpful to be curious as to what is on the other side. What opportunities and possibilities could we discover if we looked past fear? If we used those things as a magnet through? 

Deep Sea Fishing, off the coast of Costa Rica