You go to your front line first and foremost, to show up for yourself.

BECAUSE –

What happens if after hearing that call, you don’t go?

– Gail Conrad

OPENING:
Hello all you Vanguards & Visionaries, Innovators & Rule-Breakers!

So glad you landed here today!

Here we explore the creative and metaphysical, the link between consciousness and invention, so—let’s break some boundaries, turn things upside down & use the chaos to create in a whole new way!

And do stick around at the end of this episode, for I have an update about my schedule, and what you can look forward to next.

Meantime, check out my website: gailconrad.com. That’s:
https://gailconrad.com

There you’ll find the podcast and all of the stories, but also—there I’ll keep you updated about new offerings as well.

And now—here we go!

(OPENING continues, with MUSIC:)

Hello and welcome to the Wildscape Podcast, sharing tales of stepping into the unknown to create more art, beauty, and magic in your life. I’m your host, Gail Conrad, and today you’re listening to:

WILL YOU GO TO THE FRONT LINE?
—

I’m scared. Don’t know how this will work out. I just said NO, to one of my closest friends.

I’ll be deliberately vague about details here, but what I will add is –

Just as I fear, when I say “no,” I lose the friendship and a battle begins.

Saying “no” puts me right on the front line.

So everyone –

Hello, and here we are, with the uncertainty gage going up and up—and where it leads, none of us know.

While not recording this in battle-fatigues and in front of a giant tank, when reflecting upon this topic today, perhaps I might as well be, for let me ask you this:

When I say front line –

What do you think about?

I’ll guess, a war—maybe those who travel right up to the edge of danger, come closest to where the enemy is positioned, ready to attack.

You might flash on young soldiers, hunkering down in trenches. There’s lots of mud. In films, what often hits you first is the silence—the tension of waiting, until upon a signal, they charge forward. Many don’t survive.

Okay—now that I got that out of the way, yes—this can be related to where we’re going today, except –

And here’s a hint:

Would you say that you have any active battles in your life?

I ask because today, I invite you to explore an alternative front line.

This one stars you, no matter what your gender and what your age. It can still feel dangerous, like you’re putting your life on the line.

But what’s the alternative, and critically—what’s at stake?

And what happens if you don’t go, especially after hearing your own battle cry?

Maybe you guessed—today, I’m talking about your Personal Front Line.

And two things to know –

One: Here you are both your own General and your own front-line advancing Troop.  No one else conscripts you. You conscript yourself.

Two: This front line travels with you, so in a nanosecond, its backdrop can shift.

It can be where you live, where you work, at a coffee shop…pick a place; it can show up there. And, it can play out in any arena of your life.

One distinction:

This is not for the sudden SOS-type emergency, like if your street is on fire and you join firefighters to put out the blaze, or if a friend calls in the middle of the night and you speed them to the ER.

Still, in case my title, Will You Go To The Front Line, sounds like I’m daring you to ship off right now, know that this front is not for battling every challenge, nor is it for fighting minor affairs.

You go to the front line to effect pressing and critical change in your life.

But—first, you want to hear the call.

By call, I don’t mean a blaring of a bugle or some grand banging of drums. It’s an inner call, and it’s not generic. In other words, it’s not some inner genie that repeats:

Go to the front line…

No. Embedded in this call, however it sounds to you, is the absolute clear knowledge of:

Why are you going to the front?

What has come to such a critical point in your life?

Where must you right now—take a stand and for what, must you right now – fiercely fight?

At this point, you’re also able to answer the question:

What’s the risk?

As we continue, I invite you to choose any one personal front-line battle—past, on-going, or even imminent, that comes up vividly, and is most top-of-mind, for you.

For once you know the risk, the question becomes:

How do you prepare?

Well, not necessarily with sit-ups, pole-vaulting, or drinking smoothies every day. We each prepare differently, but hopefully, you have a strategy, and a fluid one.

Think of how a fire can change direction; all it takes is a shift in the wind. So maybe you have a Plan A and B, or even a Plan C or D.

But there’s one non-negotiable necessity that you can’t do without—your courage.

For whether it’s your front line of friendship, your front line of health, the front line of your finances, or take the front of a creative collaboration, or of any relationship –

You must bring your utmost courage to the front because that’s what gets tested the most.

In an early episode called Acts of Courage & Beyond, I define courage as:

Consciously acting in the face of fear.

Why fear? Because for you, the stakes are that high, and you’re aware of the risk.

So know this about going to the front:
You do your utmost, the best that you know how to do, at that moment in time.

And yes—it often feels like you’re putting your life on the line.

Test it out.

Reflect on the front-line battle, that came up most vividly for you.

What’s at stake?

And what is the risk?

I’ll add:
The only strategy that doesn’t work is pretending that the front line doesn’t exist.

When I first begin college, I think—I’ll become an anthropologist. So off I go and take Anthropology 101. The required textbook of the day is The Raw and the Cooked, by the renowned French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Now, if you ask me today to talk about his theory of structural anthropology—I can’t. But what has stayed with me all these years is that title: The Raw and the Cooked, the dichotomy and visceral feeling of those words.

And I wonder –

Might we all feel a little of both these days? Both raw and cooked?

I mention this because it’s how you can feel at the front.

Your emotions are raw; no mistaking them now. Yet you’re cooked, in that this isn’t a sudden spur of the moment, knee-jerk reaction battle. You’ve had this challenge baking in you for a while.

So now—the oven timer rings. The signal to act.

The question is:

What kind of courage will it take?

Think of Naomi Osaka, the Japanese tennis star and activist, who quits the French Open when her psychic-emotional well-being fights against the enormous expectations generated by her career.

Or Chris Smalls, the man who, upon protesting, was fired by Amazon. He then proceeds to organize Amazon’s first U.S labor union and I’ll add—against all odds.

These are two highly publicized front-line battles but know—the majority are not. Your battles may not generate headlines, nor a social media blitz.

You go to your own personal front line first and foremost, to show up for yourself, because –

What happens if after hearing that call, you don’t go?

I’ll return to saying NO to my friend:

Maybe that battle call was faint, or maybe I stalled—took too long to gather my courage, or to prepare. I can’t pinpoint my exact reason now, except –

I did act but by then, the battle had spread, and spilled over into multiple areas of my life.

My point:
If you don’t go, or get there soon enough –

The front comes to you.

All right—maybe about now, you want an ice cream, and sure—the good news is—you don’t always have to be at the front!

It’s not always active, nor should it be, for even without physical weapons, even without exchanging one physical punch, at the front, you confront fear and danger. Go into pin-pointed focus. Easy to hit adrenalin overload.

So yeah—there can be casualties, and fierce wear and tear to your body, spirit, and mind.

That’s why we don’t live endlessly 24/7 at the front.

But –
What happens if the battle doesn’t work out?

Isn’t hindsight interesting?

Isn’t this one reason why so many people dream of traveling to the future? To see how they can, from that place, change the present, or should we say the past?

I look at my own life, and for me, the joke is:

Looking back three months, or even three days ago, I’ll think—Oh, I’m so much wiser now!

That is, until I get hit with a new challenge and make another, albeit hopefully brand-new mistake.

Consider what you experience when your battle doesn’t work out like you intended and hoped.

Do you lose? 

Do you beat up on yourself?

Let’s take a detour:
Imagine you have a map. It shows the biggest challenges that you’ve confronted in your life.

Circled in bright red is your most recent critical battle.

If you give it a title: The Battle of…you fill in the blank.

What would it say?

And underneath, maybe note –

What action did you take?

Remember I asked:
What happens if after hearing your call, you don’t go to the front?

And I offered the answer:
The front line comes to you.

But there’s a Part B to the question—it’s the most critical part of all:

If, you don’t heed that call—if you don’t go:

Can you live with that?

When your answer to that short but complex question is NO—I’ll wager, that’s when you go—when you feel compelled to step up and go, to your front line.

For even if it doesn’t work out how you wanted, even if you’re badly bruised, a battle at the front is never truly lost unless you don’t show up.

By going, you show up for yourself.

For isn’t it extraordinary when you look back and wonder:

How did I keep on going?

How did I find the energy?

How did I survive?

My point is, you’re here. Somehow—you did.

Most critically, once back, can you acknowledge the revolutionary change that you made within yourself?

You might return from the front beat up and saddened. You might have incurred a terrible loss, but deep down, when you know that you gave it your all –

Would you say that this helps you to move on?

I’m thinking:

We all might be feeling numb—tired—and blasted. Might just want to crawl into a hole. So it’s the numb part that I’m talking to, and here, I include myself.

As we begin to un-numb—to emerge or, more to the point—attempt to emerge, from our collective present front, that’s when all these other little fronts, maybe neglected personal fronts, pop up.

Like now.

Consider –

Is there something of critical and pressing importance, that’s calling to you now?

Something that will require your utmost courage because the stakes are that high, and you know the risk?

If so,

WILL YOU GO TO THE FRONT LINE?

Thank you, and don’t leave yet.
—
I said I have an update. There’s so many of you who listen, who I don’t know, and I’d love to know who you are.

I’ll be breaking for the summer, or at least, the northern hemisphere’s summer, but during this time, I want to be in touch, because –

I’ll be planning some brand-new offerings, including podcast-related workshops, a series of Wildscape stories, articles and more.

So, the best way for me to let you know what’s happening is to make sure you’re on what I’m calling: my Wildscape New Adventures mailing list.

So even if you’ve subscribed through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, for example, if I don’t already have you listed, or you’re not sure if you’re on my personal friends’ list, I’d love for you to sign up so I can keep you posted.

You can go to gailconrad.com – that’s gailconrad.com, and you’ll see the Subscribe to Wildscape New Adventures list, both on the home page, and on the podcast page. Easy to find.

And as always, I’m Gail Conrad, your host of the Wildscape Podcast. The opening music is by Chip Barrow.

Remember, do let me know who you are. 

The address again:
https://gailconrad.com

Bye for now –

When I say front line –
What do you think about?