If I had no fear

The Doorstep Mile

If I had no fear

Ocean rowing sounds a dangerous business. There’s no knowing what could wrong when you venture onto the Atlantic in a 9-metre rowing boat with no motor, sails or support boat.

All sorts of fears preoccupied me before we began. You would be a fool not to reflect on the potential hazards of a big adventure (not to mention the endless, too-close proximity of naked, hairy arses covered in salt sores). But providing you keep yourself attached to the boat, keep an eye out for collision hazards and ensure the boat’s hatches are always sealed shut, then nothing catastrophic should happen. You won’t drown, and you won’t sink. You’ll probably be fine.

Ocean rowing, therefore, provides an excellent example of perceived risk versus real danger. It sounds terrifying, yet most threats remain within your control.

Consider this distinction in your own plans. What are you scared of that is holding you back? Are they genuine dangers? They might, perhaps, be financial risks rather than physical ones. These should not be dismissed lightly. How can you mitigate them?

Now compare the real dangers with the demons keeping you awake, which are nothing more than worries inside your mind. The uncertainty, the unknown, the prospect of losing control. Before the row, I had lumped all of these things together as ‘failure’, and together they scared me. The stigma of failure. What people would think. Feeling like an imposter. These should not be in the same league as losing your house or being eaten by a shark. Yet they often hold an even tighter grip on our actions.

I was anxious as we rowed out of the harbour, past cafés full of people relaxing in the sunshine. A boy fishing on the end of the harbour wall did not notice us pass. On the hillside above the town, a farmer in a red shirt ploughed his field. Meanwhile, each stroke of the oars took us closer towards a point of no return. It felt like katabasis, a trembling descent into the Underworld in a quest for heightened knowledge. Or summat like that. This much was clear: we were leaving the safe world behind and gambling it on a monstrosity of big waves, seasickness, pain, exhaustion and anxiety. It felt absurd.

For the first few days, the experience was hideous. I was, in so many ways, out of my depth. Between the hours at the oars, the snatched scraps of sleep, the damp loneliness and the endless puking, something monumental began to sink into my thoughts. No matter how much I willed it, there was no way off this boat. A bag stuffed with a million dollars could not have helped me. I would have swapped it for an hour’s sleep anyway.

(Back on dry land, I find it helpful to compare my worries with being out in a storm in a leaking boat in the middle of the night with raw buttocks, a bucket for a toilet and a diet of disgusting dehydrated food for a month and a half. Perspective is a handy tool.)

It is rare to do something where, even if you are desperate, there is no option of quitting and scurrying off to somewhere a little cosier and safer. Out at sea, there was no way to say, ‘Sayonara, punks. I’m done with this.’ Our nearest neighbours were the astronauts on the International Space Station. We were truly on our own. There was no escape. We were in this for the long haul now. I found the prospect appallingly bleak. I felt very small.

But this also meant that the only thing we could do was keep rowing. Stroke after stroke, day after day, week after week. If we kept rowing and did the key bits correctly (harnesses clipped on, avoid collisions, close hatches) then eventually we would hit land and success. In other words, although the trip seemed brutal at the time, it was almost impossible to fail.

This realisation came upon me gradually, in the same way that you row through a long, dark night and dawn creeps up almost imperceptibly. You don’t notice it, you don’t notice it and then – suddenly – it is light again. The sun broaches the horizon, the doubts and weariness of the night are blasted away, and someone cranks up the tunes and hands you a cup of tea (and some nasty Slovenian porridge).

This was a turning point for me. Accepting that there was no way to quit and understanding that we were unlikely to fail was liberating. Being fully committed is exhilarating. I stopped worrying, stopped churning through exhausting negative hypothetical thoughts and set about learning to savour the crazy experience.

I admit it is easier to say this than to actually do it – an ocean row is not a typical scenario. But wouldn’t it make all our lives and plans so much more enjoyable, unshackled and zippy if we just relaxed a little about the connotations of failure? If you knew that you wouldn’t fail, what would you do and when would you begin it?

OVER TO YOU:
If you had no fear and if you knew that you wouldn’t fail, what would you do?

When would you begin that thing?

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