Swimming through tunnels 600ft underground in search of cave paintings that might point to a lost Arabian city, moving secretly by night when fighting in Oman, plunging into icy waters and needing rescue...No I haven’t been watching Indiana Jones all afternoon; I have been listening to Sir Ranulph Fiennes. His talk was filled to the brim with tales of adventure and danger, and yet he told such an abundance of these stories, it was as though they were as common and normal as nipping to the shops! It made me marvel at the number of amazing things he has seen, done and experienced. Fiennes was talking on the theme of fear (in keeping with his new book - Fear!) He was very matter of fact about an emotion that we can all too easily slip into, until it consumes us so that we can’t think straight. It was fascinating to hear Fiennes say "I have a real, real fear of heights, but only by day." If it’s dark and he can’t see the height, he simply isn’t scared. There is a quote - which I must confess, I know from watching Princess Diaries, and not thanks to anything more profound - that I really like and think is relevant to today's talk. “Courage is not the absence of fear”. There in front of me was a seventy-two year old man who has led countless expeditions since before my parents were born, and continues to do so. He has raised money for charity and broken world records. He’s faced ice, heat, water, mosquitoes, spiders and polar bears. He is the ‘only man to’ and the ‘first man to’ in his field, must have the best CV going, and even chopped off his own fingers. And yet, there he stood to speak for an hour about feeling scared. It seems to me that Sir Ranulph Fiennes has plenty of courage, though still he has had perhaps more than his fair share of feeling absolutely terrified. Fear is not a flaw – it’s natural and human. Now I hope you’ve found this blog informative over the past fortnight, as I have covered events from the Chester Literature Festival line-up. But even now with the festival drawing to a close, I want to ensure I keep the facts flowing ‘til the end, so allow me to finish with a few things I was enlightened about this afternoon. It’s like they say: you learn something new every day.
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AuthorMegan Kate Chester Archives
June 2017
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