Daring Greatly

It's 7 p.m. on a Friday night. You've had a long day at work. Your clients yelled at you, your coworkers spent all day sharing vapid gossip with you, and all you want to do is come home and stream "Gilmore Girls" on Netflix until your eyes shrivel; just you, the computer, and a hot order of Drunken Noodles and Crab Rangoon from the Asian place down the street. Instead, an old friend invites you out for a night on the town. There will be dancing, drinking, and many new faces that you won't recognize because you've been in a state of self-imposed social exile for the past several months. Your social anxiety sensors are tingling. What do you do?

You're stuck between a rock and a hard place, right? On one hand, the day has been long. You totally deserve '90s reruns and greasy food. On the other hand, you're being thrown a bone here. Friends who you've not seen in forever have decided not to reject you for your antisocial ways and actively want to spend time with you. So is this really the toughest decision to make? Why are you belaboring it?

You've arrived at home by now and are pondering deeply as you stare into your lazily swirling cup of Oolong. It is tough and you're not crazy because rejecting those Drunken Noodles, rejecting a night of blessed isolation and judgement-free dressing down, is hard. A social life, a life which is personally exciting and fulfilling, one in which you are confident in yourself and others are confident in you - is a challenge, a process, not a result.

This anxiety and in fact all emotions, says Brene Brown in her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, are symptoms of vulnerability, and should be embraced because "to feel is to be vulnerable" (33). Vulnerability, says Brown, "is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity" (34).

Your tea is almost done and, as you sit watching the hands on the kitchen clock move ever onward, you'll need to get ready soon if you want to get to the bar on time. With a start, you realize that if the mountain will not come to you, you must go to the mountain.

If you don't make an occasional stand against your curmudgeonly nature, guess what? You'll be a curmudgeon. A lonely, sedentary curmudgeon who prefers her own company to the possibility of making new connections, putting yourself out there, accepting that you're worthy of friendship, of fun, of having a good time, of health, or happiness, of a life beyond the dim lighting of your laptop's screen.

A weight has lifted from your shoulders. Sure, you still don't have the life you want, but now you realize, for the first time in a long while, you can do something about it. You have the ability to go to the mountain. It may not happen in a day (or a night), a week, or maybe not even after several years, but goddammit if one foot in front of the other won't eventually get you to the top of that stupid hill.

You put your cup in the sink and shed your business attire for something more suitable. You're feeling courageous. Tonight you start for the mountain.