100 Days of Wonder – #18

It’s about time we had a me and Piglet picture. Did you know I am a scaredy-cat? I will worry about lots of things and I get anxious about silly things and in this big and crazy world I often feel small and insignificant and powerless. I’m scared of making wrong decisions at work and in life, sometimes I am so terrified of running down a steep hill that I stop at the top and cry. Some of it is rational and some if it isn’t. I’m not brave, or rather I have a limited amount of brave to go round and given that most things scare me in some way, I have limited capacity to do the things that push me out of my comfort zone. Like Piglet says, it can be hard to be brave when you are a very small animal. So many quotes about love and friendship and life in general are given to Pooh Bear but I like Piglet more. Piglet is kind and shy and braver than he knows and he does the right thing even when he’s scared. He doesn’t make rash decisions and he listens. We need to be more like Piglet. Piglet also embodies a contradiction I feel a lot of affinity with because Piglet is brave and so often out of his comfort zone. I get that. I like change, I am not risk averse, I like adventures and I do things that scare me all the time. I get irritated with myself if I spend too much time in my comfort zone (which is really just the under a blanket on my sofa with a cat or 4, a good book or film and ridiculous amounts of cheese) so I chase the impossible, I run down the hills, I give papers at conferences, I travel, I swim in the ocean, I go somewhere people-y, I hike up the hills and climb the bridges, I teach rooms full of students and even go on a rollercoaster in the dark that goes upside down (more on that another time maybe – because – aaaaaaargh). The point is, while I often feel like I am running out of brave and have to fight the urge to retreat and hide, we are always so so so much braver than we think and what the world needs right now is bravery in speaking out, in not looking away, in taking action, in speaking truth to power.