Pushing past fear

Whilst on holiday in Mallorca, which apparently is sometimes referred to as Majorca and pronounced that way too, but wrongly; who decides these things?

Anyway, whilst on holiday in Mallorca, I went on an impromptu walk with my partner. We had visited an archeological site which was unexpectedly closed and found ourselves walking up and down a mountain in Alcudia. This took us over 9 hours (almost 7 of those were non-stop walking), in total including the break for lunch, water, and toilet.

The route was marked by three dotted avenues on which to walk, some which crossed over one another; the two we followed were the red dots and the blue dots.

I am blogging about this because I learnt something from this walk about persistence and fear.

At times during the walk both myself and my partner doubted our ability to find the finish line and to be on the right path.

In the instances where he wanted to wander from the track, I kept him on it, stating that if we had to call in the emergency services to rescue us we had better be on the track, and not lost, and in the instances where I wanted to go back (read give up here), he kept me moving forward.

I am truly glad that I completed this 27k walk as it has reminded me that I am capable of pushing past fear.

I do know this, as my sister once invited me to stay at her pad in New York and was unable to be with me on the 2nd day so I had to spend the day alone in New York. I am someone who finds it very easy to get lost, and so I had to do a walk right around the building and back before I went out to make sure I recognised it on my return.

Anyway, the other aspect of fear which I was enlightened about is the irrational one, the one where fear takes over to such an extent that you actually ignore people in order to preserve what is left of your rationality. I cannot speak for my partner's feelings at the time, but I must admit that at one point, a storm was whipping up and we found ourselves very close to the coast, and a small inlet; we were concerned that we would end up on a beach and stranded. Exactly at this point when we were trying to decide whether we were still on the right path and whether it would swing around in the right direction, a couple passed us (they had passed ahead of us an hour ago and now were "going back" as my partner remarked), this unnerved me; in a split second as they approached me I had to decide whether to ask them why they were going back and whether they were lost; I decided not to ask because if they were going back then I might be persuaded to follow them, and yet if I didn't know I would be more likely to trust my instincts and push forward past the fear that we had somehow lost the path because we couldn't see the next blue dot yet.

In the end the path turned, around 10 minutes later, and what a relief that was; soon we were almost back where we started. I had learnt something about fear. Although I am still not sure whether fear prevented me from speaking to the couple or rationality. Because I may have been provoked into fear by the couple who were lost or believed they were, when in fact we were not lost at all.