5 Minute Friday: Dive

It's Friday. My favorite day for many reasons, but this is the reason I like to start the day out with. A whole bunch of us crazy writers (you could be one, just give it a try!) take on one word for 5 minutes. We write and leave perfection behind us. Thanks Lisa-Jo for always inspiring us! Join up over at her site or read some of the other crazy-brave folks that are linking up their own 5 minutes today!

Topic: Dive
GO! 

It is fear that keeps us from fulling entering in, head first and bold and brave.  I've been thinking about how fear can keep words and dreams locked away. Fear can be a high dive that we stomach sick look over the edge of and retreat to safer ground or it can be a small leap from the side of the pool that we build up higher than an Olympic tandem dive.

I'm over a week into this year of fearless and it isn't the mountains of fear that I have found myself facing. It is the mole hills that have made the words lock up and the knees knock hard. It is the times when I know I need to say something, but the words jumble around in my head and fall flat against my tongue. The small moments of bravery in an ordinary day when I need to be selfless, but my self is screaming weakness. Those are my fearful moments. My fear-filled ordinary moments.

Fear is a tricky thing. The way it holds us hostage in a hundred ways. The way it makes us think that it is worth being feared, worth being respected by keeping the words locked up with the key thrown away. Let me tell you that it isn't. Fear can't stand being disrespected. It runs, tail between its legs, away. That's the way we break its spell. That's the way we leap from the side of the pool and plunge boldly off the high dive of our life.

STOP!