Getting over fear of failure: Lessons from Gubbio
March 20th - Gubbio, Italy
The highlight of our studies in linguistics, though, was welcomed with a small wave of exhaustion that quickly dwindled upon our arrival, out of pure excitement. I consider myself a moderately superstitious person, so when we arrived, and we did our walk along the fountain, forget luck, I fully told myself that this was a good omen and felt a shared belief with this other culture. My mom and I practice many holistic rituals for protection and abundance, which we inherited from my grandmother, so it only added to my feeling of being connected to everything.
We walked all around the museum inside a castle in the Piazza Grande, where there was a lot of art about Saint Francis and many other artists. This day was a big milestone for me in terms of language. While we were touring the place, this kind of lady who worked there joined our group and tried to explain to us things about the art and the crests of the families, but it was all in Italian. I was a mix between shocked and determined to understand what she was saying, almost as if it were a challenge, and at that point in the trip, I think I got a good grasp of what she was saying, and I was even able to ask her about things that I needed to clarify. I don't consider myself a shy person, but I do fear failure a lot, and with that fear comes a bit of avoidance of situations that could lead me to fail. So my engagement with this lady in front of everyone was huge for me.
Then came another fear to get over, heights. I don't ever ride roller coasters, even when I'm coerced or blackmailed into it, but doing this in the lift was both a highlight and a nightmare. I went with Elise as my basket partner, and perhaps it was not the best idea to have two people who were terrified together at the same time, but it was very comforting to know that I was the only one terrified. I think it became, for me, almost a really good metaphor for doing the things you want in life. As previously mentioned, I'm really scared of failure, but there are things I want to do that scare me. It's good to know I'm scared, because it means I care. So, like the basket lift, I suppose you just have to run and get on the basket to start your journey. At first, it was extremely terrifying. You look around, and you are so extremely disoriented, wondering when this dizziness will stop. But after a few minutes, you kind of look around, and you look back, and God, you've gotten so far ahead, and what a thing it is to look back on. more so when we arrived at the very top, God, I could have kissed the floor from how happy I was to be back on stable ground, but we arrived nonetheless. I think after that day, I told myself that I would do things that scared me a little bit more to get out of that comfort zone and perhaps fraternize with others who are in the same situation: we don't know where we're going, but we are striving towards something.
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