By
Emily Hoffman
, Wellesley College
Summary
What do you do when you’re desperately afraid of heights, and you find yourself on a hiking trip that has you jumping off 50-foot cliffs and rappelling down 90-degree angles? Do you grit your teeth and take the plunge, or do you swallow your pride and refuse to move, establishing yourself as the biggest wimp in the group? Ordinarily, I would have enthusiastically embraced the title of token wimp if it meant I didn’t have to jump or climb or do anything that would mean leaving flat, solid ground. But something happened one night in the Negev desert in Israel, where it was too dark to see how high we were climbing, and there were so many friends around that the fear of falling never crossed my mind. That was the night I learned that nothing was impossible, and that challenges are too important to be missed because of a little thing called fear.
