It is perhaps the greatest fear of humanity. To fail. A large net that when cast catches most all else there is to fear. What is the fear of public speaking, and other high pressure socializing, but the fear that we will fail in the minds of others? The fear of heights is, as is often remarked, really the fear of falling, but the fear of falling is really the fear that we will fail to keep our balance. Fail to stay tethered to the ground and in a sudden gust of wind or shift of earth to find ourselves plummeting toward that most universal fear. And what is death but a failure to survive?
Our fear of these things is in inverse proportion to the trust we place in ourselves against their challenges. Philippe Petit was able to walk along a rope between the Twin Towers because he knew the exact limits of his balance. We would rightly be afraid to try such an act, we know it is beyond our limits, but how many of us even know our limits? Most never even approach them so ingrained is the fear of failure. The fear that our limits our even closer than we surmise. But what is there, truly, to fear in failure? Often we are risking nothing, or near it, and the cost is mere embarrassment. And that small risk is where we must start. Where we begin the long process of circumscribing our limits and so build to greater risks and eventually the jump must be made. There is a time when the larger risks must be made. Our bones, or our careers, or our fortunes, or, sometimes, that greatest risk of all: Our lives. But, when we do it, truly risk it all, even if we fail, is that so bad? To meet our end a little sooner than some, and in a way that it may be said of us what is said of Phaethon, "though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared." That is not so great a thing to fear.