What are you Afraid of?

What are you afraid of? Five words that change my life every time I stop and get to the bottom of them. I’m afraid of spiders, I have been since I was a kid, ever since I got bit while sleeping and had my left calf swell up to the size of a nice large Maui papaya. I’m mildly afraid of being bit by a shark, completely irrational I know, but something I wrestle with almost every time I paddle out into the water. It’s not a crippling fear, more one that lies dormant in the back of my mind, only playing up if it’s a particularly murky day in the ocean or if I’m out there alone. I harbor a slight fear of being attacked by a mountain lion while trail running or hiking. I have a whole host of fears like those above, topical fears you could call them. They aren’t life or death in the immediate sense, they’re just fears that I have created in my own mind for one reason or another, and held onto. Overall though, they fall into the category of smaller, rather mundane fears. While those are good to address, the type of fear I’m going to talk about in this post runs deeper. I am talking about life altering fear. What are you AFRAID of? What keeps you awake at night? What makes you question everything? What fears are you allowing to govern your life, to influence the choices you make every day, to unknowingly guide you in a direction that you may not have intended?

One of the best methods I have found for confronting fears is to expose them. To push them out of the shadows and into the light and watch them wither like a vampire in the sun, rather than keeping them locked up and hidden away. Sometimes even the act of speaking them aloud can help us let go of them, or at least release their hold over us. So, in that vein, I’ll share one of my greatest fears with you: I’m afraid of a life without meaning, of a life not fully lived, of a life governed by the expectations of others, a life spent existing rather than living. I am afraid of leaving this world with regrets. By acknowledging that, and by making peace with it, coming to understand it, I have been able to move through it. Now, I am confident that even in my most doubtful moments, there is indeed great meaning in my own life. Before I dive into the present, and how I arrived here, I’ll rewind a little bit. 

The question of a life with meaning goes back to my childhood. It might sound strange for a teenage boy to be thinking about that, but I always have. It’s probably why I struggled so much with the concept traditional schooling as I was constantly questioning what purpose things served in my own life. While my grades would lead you to believe that I was a typical thriving student, what was going on internally was never quite aligned with the external. I was always asking, “why”, much to the chagrin of most of my teachers. Why am I taking these classes when they have nothing to do with what I want to do in life? Why can’t I spend this time and energy focusing on the few subjects that do greatly interest me? Why do I even have to show up here if I aced the SAT’s and now have a college acceptance letter in hand? What, I wondered, was the point of this charade we were tall taking part in? Was it really in the best interest of young, easily swayed adolescents to spend our days jumping through hoops? Judging from the prevalent substance abuse issues at my affluent prep school, by my senior year, I concluded that the path we were all being led down had very little to do with helping us become thriving human beings and was instead focused on getting us to do what we were “supposed” to.

That line of questioning followed me into my brief one year of college, where I was met with more of the same. More “prerequisite” classes that are required for no apparent reason other than to generate income for colleges, using up the majority of one’s first year of higher education on things that were already taught in high school. College is often sold to high school students as the place they can begin to finally pursue their dreams, but the reality is they are met with a whole host of arbitrary requirements, with no logic behind them, other than the tired justification of molding a “well rounded individual”. 

As I left college to pursue cycling, I continued asking why once again, usually to the displeasure of team directors and managers. I was like the incessant four or five year old, questioning everything. I was always looking for a better way to do things, a way that made more sense, a way that allowed us as riders to perform to the best of our abilities. I guess it was only a matter of time, only natural, for the question of “why” to take on a broader meaning. And so it did, as it moved onto the sport as a whole. What purpose was all this racing I was doing serving? Was there meaning in it? For a long time, the answer had been “yes", but eventually, it became a clear “no”. Towards the end of my cycling career, and well into my triathlon career, I was often kept awake at night questioning the purpose of what I was doing, trying to justify all of it to myself. 

Not the purpose in the sense of trying to win races, but the actual purpose in life. I was living in an alternate reality, one governed by social media posts, race performances, team politics, and the like. One that prioritized and valued toeing the party line, not being who you really are. I was always well aware that I was in a bubble and throughout my career I had to actively try and keep that bubble from popping in order to do my job as a professional athlete. Still, I was bothered by the knowledge that there was so much happening outside of my insulated world. I couldn’t help but think that while I was so focused on trying to win a race, fretting about my next training session, or what exactly to eat for my next meal, that so many people at that very moment were dealing with real life or death issues. So many people were without a home. So many kids were suffering. Throughout my career, the fact that you could turn on the news on any given day and see photos from somewhere in the world I had never been, people sorting through the bits and rubble of what used to be their home before a bomb went off, or a war ravaged their city, at times made me feel completely disconnected from the life I was living. 

It may sound like it should have been easy for me to dismiss all of that as “not my problem”, since it didn’t directly affect my life as a pro athlete. After all, life isn’t fair in any way, and if you don’t block out some of it and carry on with your day to day the effect of trying to understand all the cruelty in the world could be crippling. The fact was, constantly considering the reality outside of my bubble did deeply affect my life as a human being, in fact it had since I was a kid, which I will get to in a moment. Right or wrong, it seems that many (not all) athletes with long careers have the ability to completely block out the so called “noise”, to prioritize what they need to do and keep the blinders on to avoid seeing whatever else may be going on in the world as a whole. This was something I struggled with on and off throughout my racing days, at times finding myself able to do it, but then always questioning whether I wanted to turn into someone who could do it.

My inability to block out the “noise”, at least in an enduring way, comes from an experience when I was younger that has stuck with me ever since. Throughout middle and high school we had to contribute a certain amount of community service hours each quarter. More often than not, I would volunteer at the homeless shelters around Miami, usually helping to prepare meals and, over time, those experiences came to be some of my fondest childhood memories. I remember the first time I did it, feeling so entirely out of place. Here I was, a prep school kid, preparing and serving meals to people of all ethnicities, all backgrounds, who were enduring a difficult patch of life. Even at fourteen years old I worried about what they would think of me, of how I could show them that I wasn’t doing this out of pity. The first time I went, I did so to fulfill the community service requirement. The next time, and each one thereafter, I went because I wanted to connect, to feel, to try and understand the lives of these people I was helping to prepare meals for. 

Each time, after we prepared the meal, we got to serve it to all the people staying at the shelter. They came in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Young and old, black, brown and white, poverty and falling on hard times doesn’t discriminate. There were children there with their parents and that especially broke my heart. Somehow, even at that age, I could see that those kids were no different than I was, they were just born into a more challenging life. While it wasn’t my fault that I was born into a middle class family, it wasn’t their fault that they were born to parents who were struggling to make ends meet, who were without a home and without food. It struck me as incredibly unfair, and made me question why it wasn’t me who was in their shoes, why I had a home to go back to and a full refrigerator waiting for me. 

At the end of the day, after everyone was served, those of us who had prepared the meal got to eat, and if we so chose, we were invited to go and sit with all the people we had just served. So that is what I did, every time. I distinctly remember talking to a few of the adults that first day and it only served to reinforce what I had seen of myself in the children who were there in the shelter. These adults, they were just like my parents, except with less good fortune. One of the individuals I had a conversation with was exceptionally well spoken and I wasn’t brave enough at the time to ask how he had ended up the situation he was in, but I always wish I had. The thing that stuck with me the most was the gratitude, the palpable feeling of thankfulness that was always present as everyone shared a meal. There was no anger, resentment, or dissatisfaction in any of the homeless people I spoke with. They were simply grateful to be right there, under a roof, with a meal in front of them. 

I impart the story above for this reason: at fourteen years old, it was the first time that I truly considered life in the broader perspective. From that moment on, I started to pay more attention. My entire life, my mom would always give a few dollars to whatever homeless person was standing under the overpass on the way home from school. As I got older, I remember I asked her why, as I was at the age where I was under the assumption that if they were living like that, they would probably spend it on drugs or alcohol. It was a very privileged and judgmental view (this was before that first experience at the homeless shelter). She told me, “Andrew, it’s not about what they do with it, it’s about the act of giving. They might go spend it on drugs or alcohol, but they also might go spend it to have their first meal in days. You just don’t know, and it’s not up to you to decide.” 

That concept stuck with me, that it wasn’t up to me to judge, it wasn’t my place to decide what happened after doing the right thing, it was my job just to do the right thing. To give with no expectations. As I got older, I understood more and more what she meant when she told me that. You just never know what someone has gone through, where they came from, or what they have overcome along the way. I now recognize that it might have been a miracle that the homeless person my mom was handing a couple of dollars to was even standing there that day, that they had made it that far in life. Standing there under that overpass might have been a small victory for them, a sign that they were beaten down but not broken. When I went to the homeless shelter to prepare the meals and feed those in need, that message hit home. Sure, these people were in the shelter that night, but they weren’t allowed to stay there forever. They might very well be the person under the overpass the next week. 

As I got a little bit older, more focused on college acceptance and then on cycling, I let my humanity slide by the wayside a bit. I let that connection I felt to the rest of the world wane. After I became a professional cyclist, my bubble in the athletic world was very insulated, very comfortable. Unlike sports such as American football and basketball where the athletes do truly incredible things for their communities, many of them coming from tough upbringings or rough neighborhoods, the sport of cycling generally prefers that the athletes do nothing but train, race, and perform. Publicly they might say otherwise, but actions speak louder than words. So, that is what I did, until I started questioning the deeper meaning of my life once again. 

While I was in professional sport, I had this fear, this inkling, that I was living an empty life, one devoid of meaning, or at least the type of meaning that I had expected myself to create while here on this planet. As I have touched on before, the endless focus on racing and training grew old. For a long time, my motivation in cycling was two fold: One part was the personal satisfaction that I got from doing what I did, the feeling of committing wholeheartedly to something and dedicating my life to it. The other was the idea, the hope I clung to, that I could inspire. The justification for the selfishness of being a professional athlete was holding onto the glimmer of hope that I could inspire others to pursue their own dreams, regardless of the odds. I felt that if a kid who started riding at seventeen years old in Miami on an old mountain bike could make it to the Tour de France a few years later, maybe others would would see that and feel inspired. Maybe a kid in some no name town would see me on TV and think he too could make it to the Tour one day. As time passed, that meaning was no longer enough, the justification wore thin, and as you well know by now, I left the professional sporting world for good. 

It’s no coincidence that I first read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl around the time of that first experience making food at the homeless shelter in Miami and I like to revisit it every so often, as I have done again recently. Each time I read it I find I learn something new, I take something slightly different away from the pages. It seems to be a story that can provide the reader with whatever he or she is looking for depending on where they are in life. For those unfamiliar with the book, it is a short, concise, somehow uplifting story about Frankl’s personal experience in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, and about how he was able to find meaning in clinging to life at a time when most simply gave up. A true story of how he helped others find meaning in their own lives, helped them discover the internal strength to continue waking up each day when finding the will to live was a matter of life or death. Ever since first reading this book I have always tried to “check in” with myself, to see if I am aligned with my inner compass, to see if I am creating the meaning in my own life that I committed to as a hopeful fifteen year old. 

As I left professional sport, I realized fully that questioning the meaning of my own life, in the situation I was in, was a privilege. Choosing to question it, to dive into it, rather than being forced to consider it meant that I had a roof over my head, food in my belly, a healthy family, and no urgent crisis or imminent threat to my existence. The fact that someone like Frankl could find meaning in his own life even when faced with the most dire of circumstances, as well as find it within himself to provide hope to some of those around him, means that we all have a clear responsibility, both to ourselves and to this world we inhabit. We all bear the responsibility to discover our personal meaning in life and to dedicate ourselves fully to it. The luxury of never addressing this question, or allowing our fear of doing so to stop us, is simply an unacceptable compromise in my opinion. 

As I have pondered this question on and off since I was a teenager I have gained clarity on what it means to me, and I’ll share it with you here: A life of meaning is one that will allows me to die with no regrets. One that, when confronted with the end of my existence, I can look back on proudly, knowing I did the right thing, as judged by my own moral code, knowing that I gave the best of myself to this world and to those closest to me. Growing up in the environment that I did, in Miami, where in most areas you were you were considered poor unless you drove a Range Rover, I was taught by those around me (my mom was an exception, and unfortunately I was influenced easily by others at the time) that meaning in life was centered around power, money, and what others think of you, all of which were directly at odds with the feelings I had whenever I would serve at the homeless shelter. I was taught to admire doctors, lawyers, and people with impressive sounding college degrees. I was conditioned to admire the prestige, not the person. Deep down I knew that wasn’t right, I knew that wasn’t how I truly felt, rather it was how others told me I should feel. In a way, it took getting to experience some of that “prestige” for myself through the good fortune I had in cycling to understand that focusing on all of that leads to an empty life. That all of those things, or accolades from others, are of no real value. They provided no meaning and, if anything, they left me feeling emptier than when I had very little in the material sense, traveling around the country to races with just a suitcase, a bike, and a little car I was driving to my name. 

Over the past months I have once again, quite intentionally, wrestled with the question of meaning, with the challenge of finding it. In doing so I have gained a clearer picture of what actively living a life with meaning looks like for me, at this point in time. I have always felt that if I could inspire even one person, to make their life a little bit better, to connect with them in some way, then that would be worthwhile, and now I have allowed that desire to come to the forefront. The forms in which that desire expresses itself throughout my life varies. Writing is one of them, allowing me to share my experiences, good and bad, in the hopes that it may help someone, that it may provide inspiration, or that it might show others they are not alone in what they are going through. I find purpose in sharing my own lessons learned in life in order to foster a sense of connection with anyone that my writing may reach. 

Now that I have children, meeting the challenge of finding meaning has expanded to include being a good father. Setting an example of what it means to be kind, to yourself and others. Raising good children, ones who know what matters, who understand the value of human connection, as well as our connection with nature, is a gift that I can give to the world. And that same gift is really one I am giving to myself, one that will allow me to look back proudly one day.

I continue to find meaning in nature, in athletic pursuits that no one will ever see, read, or even hear about. I find incredible enjoyment in the privacy that I am now afforded in these athletic endeavors that mean something only to me, getting to choose how and with whom I share them. I find meaning in exploring the limits of my body, discovering what I am capable of, and pushing to expand those limits simply because I believe it is one of the many things I am meant to do while here on this planet. Continuing to do this even when it is not my job is my way of showing gratitude, of giving thanks to mother nature for the physical gifts I have been given and for the body, mind, and spirit that allow me to do so. It is not lost on me that I find far greater satisfaction and purpose in doing so away from the public eye than I ever did while in it. 

You see, meaning in ones own life doesn’t mean changing the world on a grand scale, it doesn’t have to be visible to anyone beyond yourself. It doesn’t need to make headlines or be shown off on social media. I intend no disrespect to those who have that as their goal, who have grand plans, but to me living an honorable life, one full of meaning, is a very personal endeavor. Changing the world starts with changing yourself. It starts with having a positive influence on those around you. Your family, your friends, your community. This planet. You can find meaning in being a parent, in painting a picture, in surfing a wave, climbing a mountain, or in being a teacher. You can find meaning in almost any pursuit that makes your heart sing, that calls to you. It is not the act of doing those things that creates the meaning but the way in which you do them, the intention behind the act. Having kids does not make you a parent in the true sense of the word. Teaching them, helping to nurture them, to allow them to grow into their own people, to treat others with respect, with kindness, with openness, that is what turns you into a parent. Climbing a mountain to brag about it to your friends, to show the world how adventurous you are, or for the photo on social media, none of that is contributing anything positive to your life, or the lives of others. If you are climbing it because you truly want to, regardless of whether anyone else will ever know about it, or see it, then you can be sure you are doing it for the right reasons.

I think many people harbor a fear of addressing the concept of meaning in their lives. It can be a difficult question to confront, one that at times may lead to a temporary existential crisis, wondering what, at the end of the day, is the point of all this? What is the point of our lives as a whole? But in that question lies the beauty: it is up to us to decide! You, and only you, can tune into what the world is asking of you, what you know you need to ask of yourself, what your purpose is here. From my experience, once you open yourself up to listening, once you allow nature and your own intuition to be your guide instead of the often misplaced and misguided priorities of society you will be amazed at what you might hear. 

It’s not always easy to tune back into ourselves, to get rid of the noise that surrounds us all constantly, but it’s worth doing. The key as we grow older is revisiting our concept of meaning and checking in with ourselves and making sure that what we are doing, the life we are leading, aligns with who we are as we grow and continually change. While I’m sure some of you reading this have already confronted this fear, if it is one that makes you uncomfortable, if the question of finding a deep purpose in your own life is something you write off while you go chase the next thing that temporarily makes you feel good, then I would suggest taking the time to address it. Sooner or later we all have to. 

In that vein, I think there is a larger collective fear that we also need to recognize. I’m referring to the fear of death and perhaps the most important question: why are you afraid of it? One of the most valuable lessons I was taught came from my friend and mentor Tareq Azim back in 2015. He encouraged me to confront death, at times daily. To question myself by the ultimate judgment of life: If you were to die tomorrow, are you at peace with how you are living? With who you are? With the way you treat people? Are you proud of your life? It was a question I had never asked myself, at least not in such a blunt way, and certainly had never been asked by anyone else. 

I know from examining my own life that at the end I will care very little about what car I drove, what house I lived in, what watch I wore, or what clothes I bought. I do know that I will think of the experiences that have filled my heart and soul, the adventures I have had, the life I have lived. I will think of the people I have shared that life with, my friends and family, whose lives I have had a positive influence on. I will remember the incredible feelings that challenging myself out in the natural world provides me with.  Even sitting here now, having every intention of enjoying a long and healthy life, I am fully aware that nothing is promised, and I know that a life lived with intention, filled with the things above, will help me to be at peace one day, whenever that time comes. 

Moving towards a life lived intentionally, one with meaning, is an active way of moving through your fear of death. We live in a culture that seems to avoid discussing death at all costs, especially in the current climate, as if it is something that is avoidable. It is in fact one of very few guarantees that we all enter this world with: we will all die one day, just as surely as the sun will rise and set the day after we do. Anti aging supplements, things to help you look and feel younger, glamorizing youth while shying away from the wisdom and experience of older age, extending people’s lives through drugs and surgeries at the sacrifice of quality of life, all of it seems crazy to me. The fear around getting old is combatted in our society by avoidance instead of action. Instead of change, instead of aligning ourselves with what truly matters to us, it seems most people world rather just ignore the inevitable and stick their heads in the sand, pretending what they fear will not find them there. I would propose that this fear of death comes from the fact that somewhere inside each of us we know what matters in our own life and if we refuse to live in a way that honors that, that aligns with our true values, it creates a great amount of dissatisfaction and discomfort. 

To extend beyond that, I think ultimately the only measure of our lives is how we positively affect those around us while doing what we love. Whether it is our children, our friends, our family, or a complete stranger on the street, what to this world, small or large, is what we will measure ourselves by one day. The specific way in which we create meaning, in which we give back, in which we honor our lives, is up to each of us to find. It brings to mind a passage from Man’s Search For Meaning where, in the situation faced by Viktor Frankl and his fellow prisoners, it would seem that survival was the meaning of life, allowing no time to actively think about a purpose other than trying to avoid death. But Frankl shows in his writing that was not the case. The meaning of life became even more valuable as he stated: “what was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude towards life…that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.” Frankl followed that by writing, “Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for reach individual.”

As you can see from the above example, finding your own meaning in life is not a luxury, not a first world problem. I would wholeheartedly agree with Frankl, that it is a responsibility, one we are each given the moment we are born. Whenever I find myself in need of a reminder to stay true to my own purpose in life I always go back to what I thought the first time I saw those kids in the homeless shelter eighteen years ago: “That could be me. Why isn’t it me?” I’ve never stopped asking myself that question and because of that I have always wanted to try to understand the stories of others, to understand why they are where they are and how they got there. When we take the time to understand, or even make the effort to try, we begin to break down the barriers that we have constructed. The walls between ourselves and others naturally, if only for a short time, come down. Thinking of that day, of those kids, is a constant reminder that it is my responsibility for having the life that I do to find my own meaning, learn how to channel it, and then figure out how to use it to have a positive impact on those around me.

Nowadays, I find myself seeking out fear rather than trying to avoid it since, as I have learned, it is one of the most powerful teachers I have ever encountered. Fear is an emotion that can allow us to get in touch with our true nature, a feeling that can guide us in the direction we know deep down we should be heading, but at times refuse to do so because, well, we are afraid. So, whether or not you can relate to any of what I have written here, try and take a moment to confront your own fears. To acknowledge them, small or large. Write them down, speak them aloud to yourself, and be honest about the process. Then, confront them, one by one. Face them head on, no matter what they are. Afraid of the ocean? Go learn to swim in it. Afraid of sharks? Swim with them. Afraid of spiders like I am? Go hold one. Afraid your life lacks meaning? Embrace the journey required to find it. Afraid of death? Ask yourself why and use that fear as your guide to start living a life that allows you to move past it. Whatever your fears may be, the only way forward is through. Some fears may never go away, but by addressing them you can at the very least lessen the hold, conscious or unconscious, they may have over your life.

I’ll leave you with one final thought: I have to imagine that at the end of our days, the curtain will be lifted for all of us. There will come a time when we are stripped of everything we once defined ourselves by and only we will know whether we lived a life that we are proud of. Only we will know whether we were able to take our fears and use them as a catalyst for change or whether we allowed them to lead our lives down a path of regret.