Fear of Motorcycles

I've been talking a lot about motorcycles lately.

I want to share something with you: I am frightened of riding a motorcycle.

That's not going to stop me.

The reason it's not is because I know exactly what that fear is: it's just noise from the reverberating echo chamber of my ignorance.

There was a time I was afraid to drive a manual transmission (I know it sounds ridiculous). Beat that. I used to be afraid to swim. Beat that. I used to be afraid to play for an audience. Beat that. With a HAMMER.

Chipping away at (or simply releasing) fear has been an ongoing, conscious act.

I'm going to force myself to move forward because I know that all it will take is to learn everything I can about how to ride a motorcycle without getting hurt or killed. All it takes is talking to people who know, getting some training and then practicing. Accumulating knowledge and experience. The bigger my knowledge and experience gets, the smaller my fear becomes.

If need be, the fear gets reshaped into a healthy respect for the potential hazards. That's a totally different thing than being unwilling to even try. It comes from a place of knowledge rather than ignorance. Fear is then transformed from a barrier into a tool.

Then the reward comes: I can finally be a part of something I've looked at from the outside for years. I can be that guy riding his bike along the winding Atlantic coast. I can ride with my friends and finally understand what it is they've been trying to tell me all this time but couldn't really put into words.

I have been a fearful person. Take a little insecurity and add an active imagination and you get a lot of worry and hesitation. With time I've gotten better at realizing when I'm doing this and getting it under control.

This is all part of the journey.