Fear has a funny way of rearing its ugly head. When I decided to finally start wearing my braces (read up on that fear here) I saw it coming from miles and ages away. This time, it came completely out of left field.
Done deal
It happened late September last year. My darling wife was putting together the playlist for the next Rollerskating show (A what? Again, read about that one here) when she came across El Tango de Roxanne, the tango version of Roxanne from The Police from the Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor’s “Moulin Rouge”.
That is one fantastic version of Roxanne, if you haven’t heard it, stop reading and go look it up. I immediately asked her who she would cast and she confessed she wanted to dance that act herself. Which made the choice for the male part rather obvious: it would be Rudy, the only adult male skater in our midst and public’s favourite. Done deal.
Fear of an idea
But then I said to her: “Dang, hon’, if I were able to skate, we would be doing that act”, which was a totally deranged thought because I don’t skate, never have and obviously never would.
As I walked out of the room I could hear my inner chatter box fire away: “What an idea, what were you thinking, ridiculous, you’d make a total fool out of yourself, everyone would laugh with you, stupid, stupid, stupid.”
But then I realised this inner dialogue had every characteristic of a fear we all have in one form or another: the fear of public humiliation. So there I was, realising that while feeling that fear, I was deciding to not even consider exploring the possibilities this might bring. I was deciding to not even give it a try, based not on the actual experience of public humiliation itself, but on the idea of possible future public humiliation.
The idea of what could go wrong, not what did go wrong, stopped me from even trying. And so I turned around and asked An what it would take for us to skate that act. She replied I would have to train like hell with only 6 months to go before opening night April 24th 2010. (3 shows for an audience of 1,200 people)
Trying is winning
And so, with the rest of the Skating club board backing the idea - they immediately loved it - we decided to give it a try. After all, trying in itself has a 100% sucess rate. I bought roller skates and started training the first week of October 2009, whenever my job, and the availability of the training facility would allow me to.
Oh, and there was something else, my training schedule wasn’t to coincide with the regular training hours of our club, because we decided to make it a surprise act. That meant that on average we had 1,5 hours per week to train on skates, which is not counting fitness, trying lifts and moves in the living room and hall...we had a ball!
I lost count of how many times I fell, got frustrated with myself, celebrated small victories, doubted myself, felt bad about letting An down when something didn’t work - she has been skating for 30 years and deserved a worthy partner for this act - felt proud of seeing and feeling progress. But mostly, I realised by giving it an honest try, I was already beating the fear’s agenda: stopping me from even trying, not because of public humiliation itself, but because of the idea of public humiliation.
Our big day
This video was shot on Saturday, April 25th, during the second show.
Fear #2: Public Humiliation from Karl Raats on Vimeo.
Words lack the power of conveying what overcoming this fear has brought about. Am I a good skater now? Not by a long shot, but in the end that’s not what this was all about. What it did do, is send a message to all our members at the skating club: if you decide to explore your own potential, go beyond what you think is possible for you, we will be there to do everything that lies in our power to make that happen. That too, came out of left field.
Doing our surprise act in front of our members during dress rehearsal was pure magic. They brought the house down. I was an emotional wreck afterwards. I felt I had short-circuited. It was just too much to take in.
We did it, somehow we did it: thanks to the trust my darling wife put in me, thanks to my fellow board members allowing me to try this, thanks to Christiane our choreographer, who was focussed on working with what I could do instead of fighting against what I couldn’t in those short months. Did I beat the fear of public humiliation? No. I beat the idea of public humiliation, which would have kept me from doing the one thing creativity asks of us: find the willingness to prove ourselves wrong about what we know to be impossible!
Tired, drained, humbled, happy, grateful, you name it...
Karl
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