My daughter dressed up as Justin Bieber for Halloween.

A few weeks ago this wasn’t a big deal.

She’s a Belieber through and through. Always has been. But when she started talking about costumes with kids at school she started to worry. All of the kids in her class and all of her friends said they HATED Justin Bieber.

She mentioned the reaction of her classmates to us over dinner one night and said she was afraid that the kids were going to make fun of her. As halloween drew closer we talked about maybe picking another costume. Perhaps something a little less polarizing. But she was determined to keep to her plan regardless of how the other kids reacted.

As she got ready for school yesterday, she lingered a little longer than usual. She was nervous and we could see it all over her face. We made her one final offer to change costumes but she was resolute in sticking to her plan.

Yesterday afternoon I was able to steal away to her school for their Halloween parade. As she passed by, in all her Bieber’d glory, she was beaming and other parents were swooning. When I picked her up from her class I heard several kids say what a great costume she’d put together and how awesome she looked. 

At home I asked her why she did it. Why not change costumes when she was so afraid she’d be made fun of?

I braced for a profound answer. What I got was classic 11 year old: “I just really wanted to be Justin Bieber!”

I told her she was my hero and I really meant it.

Most of us carry around a whole bag of our own fears.

They weigh us down with self-scripted internal dialoges. We make up outcomes before we’ve started. We plant thoughts in others heads that never existed. We put words of judgement, anger, or ridicule in the mouths of others that will never be spoken.  

We fear what others will think. We fear that “they” will find out we’re not who they thought we were. We fear that we won’t be able to live up to the potential we know is in us.

Occasionally, these fears hold us back from doing what we really want to do. From being who we know we can be. From living lives we really want to live. All because we’re afraid.

WIth my daughter’s example fresh in mind I’m thinking about my own bag of fears this morning and how I can be more like her. Not for any profound or over intellectualized reasons, but simply because “I just really want to be Bryce”! And all the possibilities doing so entails.