I
like to say I have the soul of a pioneer but the heart of a realist. The idea
of adventure is intoxicating to me but following through creates numbing stress
and sleepless nights full of worry.
I
fear change.
I
suppose everyone fears change to some degree—some people are just better at
tackling that fear than others. I am sure that even Susa Young Gates, one of
the feistiest and most outspoken women to set foot on the BYU campus, felt
somewhat nervous when at age thirteen she started college at the University of
Deseret. I imagine that she felt her confidence challenged a year later when
she became co-editor of the college’s newspaper.
Yet
we would not know her story if she had let fear define her.
Women
like Susa Young Gates inspire me. They are the feeders of my pioneer soul. A
year ago I decided I needed to stop reading about their lives and live an
adventure of my own. So I signed up for a four-month trip to China to teach
English to children.
“No,
I don’t speak Mandarin,” I would reply to everyone who asked, each question
sending a mist of doubt onto the already small flame of confidence I had in my
decision. No, I don’t have any friends there. No, I don’t know how I’m going to
pay for it. No, I don’t have any idea what I’m doing.
I
lied to everyone and told them I was excited and ready to go.
“I
would never do that,” they told me. “You’re so brave.”
But
I didn’t feel brave. I felt afraid.
Still
I went. I look back on my time in China now with great fondness and bittersweet
memory. What was once such a foreign and frightening place turned into a land
of unique culture and dynamic lifestyles. Overcrowded cities shaped into
mountains jutting towards the heavens in the blink of an overnight train ride.
Groups of giggling teenage girls would blush furiously as they asked us in
broken English for a photo, leaving with earnest cries of “Nǐ hěn piào liang!”—you
are beautiful.
Just
as I had sunk my teeth into this new place it was time for me to leave. Of all
the changes I had feared four months earlier, the one I had not been expecting
was one within myself. It changed me in ways I didn’t know needed to be
changed. My confidence increased, my awareness was amplified, and my capacity
to love grew.
That
is the beauty of courage. I think Gates knew that. I think she knew that
courage is not suddenly losing doubts and worry as a task approaches. I am sure
that when she founded the Utah Women’s Press Club, when she became press
chairman of the National Council of Women, when she set out to found the music
department at Brigham Young Academy while still a student, Susa Young Gates
felt discouragement and fear and doubt. But she knew that the results of her
endeavors would mean more to the world than the lack of her actions.
Courage
will change you. But I am learning that change can be good. My experience in
China was the hardest thing I have ever done and the best decision I ever made.
I am not the same person now that I was before. But we weren’t created to stay
the same, were we? We were created to dare and to leap and to soar. We were
created to be courageous.