Leaving Fear Behind

A moment when the ground shifts

I have seen what it looks like when people refuse fear.

We have all seen it.

We see it when people show up in their communities to say no to what they know is wrong. When they stand in streets, in town halls, in workplaces, in courtrooms, and insist that the world as it is does not get to stay that way simply because it is powerful or entrenched or convenient.

What has been happening to our own citizens on the streets has brought tears to so many of our eyes. Tears of horror. Of disbelief. Of grief. Moments that force a reckoning with how fragile the social fabric really is, and how quickly fear can be weaponized.

Sometimes that courage has cost lives. Literally. And yet those acts do not vanish. They start movements. They spark fires. They build resistance and resiliency in the rest of us. They show a way forward. They bring light, abundance, and momentum where there was once only silence or compliance.

Fear does not just scare us. It immobilizes us.

Paralysis is the real corrosion. A kind of rust. You sit. You worry. You replay. You wait for certainty that never comes. And while you are frozen, nothing can be built. Nothing can be repaired. Nothing can be imagined.

The moment you set fear aside, even imperfectly, something else rushes in. Creative thought. Problem solving. A willingness to test, to adapt, to move. Motion itself becomes an antidote.

I have been living this truth in my own small, brutal microcosm.

The USDA is part of a longer arc. One element in a deliberate plan to stabilize and sustain a capital-intensive business that is already operating in the real world. Not a rescue. Not a shortcut. A rational component of building durability into work meant to last.

And then the ground shifts.

The agency suddenly institutes a temporary, portfolio-wide pause on certain loan guarantees while it reassesses overall portfolio performance and underwriting guidance. The shift is abrupt. It lands without warning. For businesses like ours, built in rural communities with the same agency’s support and participation, it creates immediate dislocation.

This is not a judgment on our business. It is not a response to a failure in fundamentals. But it is intrusive all the same. A policy reversal from within the very system that helped make the work possible. Our process is affected by timing, not by viability. Still, the whiplash is real.

It is also a reckoning for the vertical farming industry as it stands today. Not as an idea, but as a tool still under development. Nascent, yes. Uneven, yes. But no different from how so many of the societal systems we now depend on were formed…through trial, error, iteration, and learning in public. Infrastructure does not emerge fully formed. It is built, stress-tested, and refined over time.

That is the terrain innovation has always required. And this is where the story stops being about us.

We say we want solutions to climate pressure, food insecurity, housing shortages, and fragile rural economies. We celebrate ingenuity in theory. But the systems that support innovation are often asked to balance urgency with stewardship, and sometimes that tension shows up as reassessment rather than momentum. For innovators across food, energy, housing, health, and climate, this landscape is familiar.

This is the moment where many people stop. They tell themselves it is too hard. That waiting is safer than pushing. Fear convinces them that stillness is prudence.

It is not.

Paralysis is the greater risk. Fear freezes people and systems long after it is clear they no longer fit the world they are meant to serve. And nothing adaptive, nothing resilient, nothing humane is ever built from a seated position.

And yet, I have been at my desk all weekend.

Not because I feel fearless. Quite the opposite. Fear shows up regularly. It taps me on the shoulder. It asks familiar questions. What if this doesn’t work. What if the ground shifts again.

When that happens, I set it aside.

Not permanently. Not with bravado. Just long enough to do the work in front of me. The calls. The writing. The decisions that keep things moving. I don’t wait for fear to disappear. I work alongside it, and I choose motion anyway.

Tonight, I was reminded of that in a simple way. A friend and investor reflected back the strength in my voice and offered a phrase that has been passed down for a reason: feel the fear, and do it anyway.

Not deny it. Not conquer it. Feel it. Name it. And move.

There is no recipe this week. No soft landing at the end. Just the practice itself.

Let’s feel the fear. And do what we can anyway.