Legendary cartoonist Sandra Boynton posted this weekend that it was 50 years ago this month that
“three months after my college graduation, I talked my way into a greeting card trade show at the NY Coliseum, with a small portfolio of cards in hand. There I met 3,494,312 companies who told me I was doing it all wrong. And one small company—Recycled Paper Products (started by upbeat mavericks Mike Keiser [#BandonDunes] and Phil Friedman)—who right away offered me a contract. I think it went pretty well from there. #hippobirdie to us!”
After being amused by her charming cast of characters for a half-century, I am grateful that Boynton had the strength and persistence to keep going after being turned away by 3,494,312 companies. That’s at least a couple million more rejections than I could have handled.
Every so often I will declare that in the face of stark reality, I choose whimsy. When I make that statement, I probably have a Boynton cartoon in mind. In a world where so-called leaders encourage us to go for each other’s throats, it’s good to have someone out there to remind us when it’s nnl pnnn brrrr dyy.
The following is the central chapter in a little book I wrote in 2010 called Refuse to be Afraid.
I hate presidential election campaigns. Every four years two people spend months screaming about how the other person is an existential threat to the future of the United States of America and every man, woman and child in the land. Every four years the screaming gets worse and worse.
They want us to be afraid of what will happen if the other person wins.
I refuse.
I learned everything I need to know about fear on a steep hill overlooking Lake Champlain in Vermont. I keep coming back to this story whenever anxiety threatens to stop me in my tracks. Childhood lessons sink in deep.
To my younger-than-10-years-old eyes, it looked more like a cliff than a hill; my impression was informed by the shale-like formations that reached down to the beach and disappeared into the pine forest above. Seen from the cabin our parents rented for a week every summer, the forest appeared to grow to the edge of a steep, rocky incline that I wouldn’t be able to scale if I had to.
And one day, I had to.
I can still smell the pine trees, I can still feel the soft but prickly bed of needles against my chest, and I still have a dark spot in my heart from the terror as I lost my tenuous grip on the hillside and plunged over the cliff.
Somewhere around 1960 when I was 7, my brothers and I had gone for a walk through the woods near the cabin. Along this stretch the pines clung precariously to the side of the hill.
The pine needles were thick underneath, and I underestimated how unstable the footing would be, as I wandered far down that nearly vertical hillside, trying to peer over the edge to see the beach through the brush. Next thing I knew, I had slipped. The bed of needles was thick, so thick that I couldn’t really get a grip, and when I did try to climb, every move I made caused me to slide a little farther down.
I was clinging to the side of the nearly vertical slope and unable to climb upward.
“Go get Dad,” I heard my older brother say to my younger brother. “Hang on, War,” he called. Hang on to what?
It didn’t take long for gravity to do its work, and I slid to the edge and then fell, screaming, over the edge of the embankment to the beach below.
The drop from the edge of the cliff to the beach turned out to be only four, maybe five feet.
When my brothers ran the long way around to the beach, they found me on the ground unharmed, laughing in relief, laughing at myself for being so terrified.
I think about that cliff a lot, when it seems that life has left me hanging by the fingernails. Fear of the unknown makes us scream. Taking on those fears makes us triumphant — perhaps it even makes us giggle uncontrollably.
Get on with it. Life isn’t waiting while you stand in the corner watching other people live it.
Get on with it. Your pantry won’t fill itself, and despite anything you may have heard, no one else is coming.
Oh, someone may promise a safety net, but you are the main attraction: You are the one who must perform on the high wire or the trapeze — the point of a safety net is to keep you from dying should you fall, but the whole point is NOT TO FALL.
So get on with it. You’ll be OK. This is what you trained for. You know you can do it; you did it in practice. This is the real thing now — in fact, it’s been real for a long time, and perhaps you didn’t notice or didn’t realize.
You’ve heard the slogans and the affirmations.
“If it’s going to be, it’s up to me.” That’s you.
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” That’s you.
“Do, or do not. There is no try.” You guessed it: That’s you.
