A Life Lived in Fear is A Life Half Lived

I’m driving to our Lead Provincial Championships in Hamilton, and I’m thinking about fear.

Two things come to mind. The first is one of my favourite quotes by Writer, Director Baz Luhrmann, from his incredible movie debut in 1992, Strictly Ballroom:

A life lived in fear is a life half lived.

Fear is such a bizarre phenomenon that we humans deal with. Other creatures feel fear, like when a young caribou is being chased by a 500 pound Grizzly bear. I would be scared of that too. In this context fear makes perfect sense. Like I don't want to be horribly mauled to death by a hungry, capable carnivore. Fear, in this regard, is a good thing. Fear helps to flood my body with adrenaline so I can run a little faster, be more alert, and move altogether with more urgency.

Thank you, fear.

But outside of the context of running for my life, fear can be a tricky thing to navigate. Some people are afraid to die. This also makes sense because we don't fully understand death, or what, if anything is beyond it. We fear what we don't understand. But this is a different kind of fear. It's less adrenaline, and more anxiety. Fear of pain is also noteworthy. We don't want to go through terrible pain. Many people are afraid of snakes and spiders; also things they don't understand that could cause relative pain or even death (about 5 people in America die each year from snake bites). But car accidents can cause much more pain than snakes, and they are FAR more common (about 45,000 deaths per year); yet we rarely find people afraid of driving. So fear is at least, in part, subjective. It depends on the person and the circumstance. It seems fear can also be rational (please, giant Grizzly, don't tear my spine out of my body), as well as irrational (your mom covering her face in a reactive panic so she doesn't see the snakes on TV).

However, car wreck fear, snake fear, death fear, and Grizzly bear fear are not the fears we are talking about when it comes to competitive sport. This is yet another brand of fear. Which brings us to the question:

Why are young athletes afraid days before, the night before, or the moments before competition? The answer is...