A couple of years ago, I started feeling called to adopt Surrender and Acceptance as my themes for the season I was in. My natural tendency is to be super controlling and neurotic, so those ideas were appealing on a conceptual level, but they didn’t feel easy to lean into.

Gradually, those words faded out – not that I had mastered the ideas, but I’d spent enough time focusing on them. It felt like they left an empty space behind because no other ideas came to take their place immediately.

I have a neighbor with a bumper sticker that says, “Surrender,” so I was regularly reminded of the lack of focus in my life. Since the other themes seemed to happen organically, though, I didn’t want to force it, so I tried to stay curious without wringing the Universe’s metaphorical neck looking for meaning.

Finally, another word started to float to the surface of the Eight Ball, and it was Fearless.

That is almost scarier than Surrender or Acceptance.

It also felt good and necessary.

One of my first moves around the time Fearless became my season’s theme was joining my hospital’s chorale. I’d seen the notifications for it for years and missed singing with a group, but there wasn’t space in my life for it. I haven’t had to sight-read music, sing in parts that I didn’t make up myself from my pew in church, or really, sing anywhere where the stakes were higher than zero since I sang in NYSSMA in high school.

Singing in Latin and learning my parts was tough for the first few weeks. But I kept going back, and eventually the wheels started to turn. Learning new songs or training myself to time my breathing can still be challenging, but it has gotten easier.

I signed up for Costume College to motivate me to meet my costuming goals. I  am working hard on several costumes while fighting the internal battle between wanting to be historically accurate and just wanting to have fun and express myself. I’m still not sure exactly where I fall with that. And there’s the other internal battle that is screaming that this is a useless, frivolous endeavor because the only purpose it’s serving right now is to bring me joy.

The most immediate thing I’ll be doing in the name of being Fearless is something I’ve wanted to do ever since I knew about it: participate in Carnival.

We’ve been visiting Tobago to see family since early in our marriage, but our trip only coincided with Carnival once, years ago, and it wasn’t in the cards to do anything other than spectate. It was in Trinidad, and the main thing I remember was my first taste of delicious doubles, and the insane volume of the music.

Each year, we’d go to fetes, limes, and concerts during our visit. I love music and dancing, and Tobago takes body positivity and national pride to the next level, without sacrificing inclusivity.

Then last year we ended our trip the day before Carnival and the FOMO nearly burnt a hole in my chest. Never again, I thought. I love the build-up of anticipation leading up to Carnival. At least once, even if I hated it, I wanted actually to be there for it, not as a spectator but as a reveler.

It also terrified me.

I’ve seen the drunk, white tourists dressed sloppily and dancing badly at clubs in Tobago. I don’t want to be that person play acting at something I can never really do right.

I guess you could say I have Imposter Syndrome about Carnival.

But Monday morning, in the wee hours of the morning, I planned to drag myself out of bed for my first J’ouvert, and later that day, we’d take ourselves out again to Play Mas Carnival Monday. To a typical American, the times these events are happening defy reason (although it makes perfect sense to avoid the heat of the day in a country located in the Tropics). I hoped my training as a night nurse would serve me well.

Maybe I could leave my socially anxious, overly-conscious self behind and just become one with the music, paint, and mud, but it would be silly to think I could just be a different person for a day, and carefree isn’t usually a word I’d use to describe myself.

I didn’t plan to drink –  I don’t like how it makes me feel. And to preserve whatever is left of my hearing, I’d be wearing earplugs. So I would be a certifiable dork, and there is no help for it. Perhaps my enthusiasm and love for the culture will be enough to compensate for whatever nerdy parts of me can’t be denied.

It’s ironic that one of the things I’ve most looked forward to in my life is a thing I fear so much.

Richard Rohr says more than once how important humility is to our spiritual development. I don’t doubt the truth of that, but it’s still hard to embrace that idea when your ego is as vain as a peacock, and mine totally is.

You could read this and rightly argue that the ways in which I’m being “Fearless” are pretty low stakes and privileged, and you’d be right. Maybe these personal challenges are a training ground for something else, and if that something else is just a more authentic life, that’s okay.

Spoiler alert: I loved it! I can’t wait to do it again. We even threw in Mud Mas on Tuesday, which ended up being the most fun event of the three. But I was so afraid ahead of time that I couldn’t make myself publish this post before it happened. I hope to write about it soon.

Photo Credit: Kimona Paramour Photography. We were waiting for Mud Mas to begin.