Before her first performance, Priya sat in the wings and made a list of everything she was afraid of.
The list was long. She was afraid of forgetting the words. She was afraid of the lights. She was afraid that her voice would crack on the note she'd been practising for three months. She was afraid of the people in the front row. She was afraid of the silence after the last chord.
She read through the list and then she asked herself a question her teacher had taught her: *What is the fear actually about?*
Not the words, not the lights, not the crack in the voice. What was she actually afraid of?
She held the question.
What she was actually afraid of was this: that she would go out there and be fully herself — not the managed, careful, presentable self but the actual self, the one that had made this song — and the room would not receive it. That she would open, and the opening would be met with nothing.
That was the fear. Not failure. Rejection.
She looked at it for a moment. And then she thought: well. If that's what I'm afraid of, let's find out.
She walked onto the stage.
The room received it.
She didn't know it would. She went out there not knowing. That was the whole thing — the going out there not knowing, and doing it anyway.
The fear had been real. And it had also, entirely, been beside the point.
The fear is real. And it is also beside the point.
