What Fear Means After You’ve Already Left
Thirty-four years ago, I left home.
I didn’t call it courage. I didn’t call it bravery. I didn’t even call it a choice.
I called it necessary.
I was eighteen years old when I landed at JFK Airport on January 7th, 1992. Winter had arrived before I did – sharp, unapologetic, uninterested in whether I was ready. I remember standing still for a moment, watching people move with purpose around me, realizing that whatever I had just done could not be undone.
There was no return ticket tucked away “just in case.”
There was no safety net waiting quietly in the background.
There was no version of my life that remained untouched by that decision.
I had crossed continents with two suitcases, $142, and no guarantees.
And somehow, that was enough.
At eighteen, fear doesn’t announce itself the way it does later in life.
It doesn’t show up as overthinking or risk analysis or carefully constructed justifications. It shows up as momentum. As movement. As a refusal to stay where you already know the ending.
I didn’t know what would happen next.
But I knew what would happen if I’d stayed.
That distinction matters more than we admit.
Somewhere along the way, fear changes shape.
It becomes quieter, more rational-sounding. It dresses itself up as responsibility. As prudence. As realism. It tells you that you’ve earned the right to be careful now. That you’ve done enough bold things already. That you have more to lose.
And so we start mistaking comfort for wisdom.
We start calling hesitation maturity.
We start confusing safety with progress.
This is where we get it wrong.
Wisdom is supposed to inform judgment, not veto possibility.
But we’ve quietly allowed it to do exactly that.
What we call wisdom is often just experience turned backward – useful for explaining what already happened, dangerously misleading when used to predict what hasn’t. When we let retrospective clarity dictate prospective decisions, we don’t become wise.
We become cautious with better vocabulary.
Looking back now, what strikes me isn’t how afraid I was.
It’s how little fear mattered.
Fear didn’t disappear.
It just didn’t get a vote.
What mattered was direction. Belief. A willingness to move without permission. To trust that identity could be rebuilt, not inherited. That confidence could be earned through action, not waiting.
That lesson didn’t come from a book or a mentor or a carefully designed plan.
It came from leaving.
Today, we talk about fear constantly.
Students are afraid of making the wrong choice.
Parents are afraid of instability.
Educators are afraid of change.
Institutions are afraid of losing relevance.
Fear has become the dominant organizing principle of decision-making.
And yet, I wonder how much of that fear is real – and how much of it is simply forgotten courage.
Because once you’ve already left – truly left – something fundamental shifts. You realize that the worst thing that can happen is rarely as catastrophic as imagined. That identity is more portable than you were told. That belonging is something you build, not something you wait to be granted.
Fear doesn’t vanish.
But it loses its authority.
This is not an argument for recklessness.
It’s an argument for remembering.
Remembering that many of us have already done the hardest thing we’ll ever do – and lived to tell the story. Remembering that movement precedes confidence, not the other way around. Remembering that certainty is not a prerequisite for action.
At some point, “wisdom” stops being earned experience and starts being a convenient explanation for inaction. At some point, it stops protecting us from bad decisions and starts protecting us from any decision that might disrupt the life we’ve carefully optimized for comfort.
Especially now, in a world that feels unstable and loud and perpetually undecided, it’s tempting to wait. For reassurance. For guarantees. For permission.
But the truth is quieter and less convenient:
The compass you’re looking for was forged the last time you chose movement over fear.
Thirty-four years ago, I left home with no roadmap and no assurances.
I didn’t know what I was becoming.
I only knew what I was unwilling to remain.
If fear feels louder now, it’s not because the world is more dangerous.
It’s because we’ve decided it’s safer to forget who we already proved ourselves to be – and what that version of us would demand next.
Ex Cogitatione, Progressus
Girish
