fear

Vaughn Eric Treppa What is fear? Heights? Bugs? The dark? Are you fearful of the water? That all may be, but I’m talking about the fear that really means something to you, that one thing that you couldn’t imagine happening in your life. Many people are fearful of death; but I think that the person is not fearful of death itself. No, I believe that people are fearful of dying before they complete something that they have been attempting to complete their whole life. In a sense, people are scared of dying before their dream is over; almost like when you’re asleep and you’re having a great dream then all of a sudden that dream is over. That’s my fear. I am fearful of dying before I was able to make my dreams a reality, but when I say dying, I don’t mean actual death itself. I mean like your dream itself dying. There’s one thing I live for, and that’s hockey. As long as I can remember, it’s been a dream of mine, to lace up my skates in a locker room, pull a jersey over my head, and walk on to the ice surface in front of thousands of screaming fans, with the logo of an NHL team at center ice. For all my life, almost nine out of ten people told me that my dream would never become a reality. My question is why? Why would you wake me up before my dream is over? In a way that is what every single person that has ever told me that I won’t make it to the NHL has done to me; they woke me up from my sleep before my dream was over. I’ve been called crazy, I’ve been called stupid; and quite honestly that makes me angry. Like when people compare athletes to students, which has been done to me; why am I stupid because I don’t have a 4.0 GPA and a 30 on my ACT with an acceptance letter to Michigan University? That person has spent hours studying and working very hard to achieve that, and I applaud them. But what most people don’t realize is, is that I am a student; a student of the game. My endless hours on the ice, then in the gym, then video review; all of those things are my