As always, David Whyte gives sound and profound advise - and raises a question. What does it mean, personally, to start close in, with that first step we are afraid to take? I would like to suggest that the first step might be a remembering of who we are as humans. In the opening pages of Nature and The Human Soul, Bill Plotkin writes:

Rather than becoming something other-than-human or superhuman, we are summoned to become fully human. We must mature into people who are, first and foremost, citizens of Earth and residents of the universe, and our identity and core values must be recast accordingly. This kind of maturation entails a quantum leap beyond the stage of development in which the majority of people live today. And yet we must begin now to engender the future human (pg 7)
To read more about this, see http://animas.org/newBook/chapter1_naths.htm

As life on the planet became more complex, our capacity to remember ourselves as citizens of the earth co-emerging with all life was threatened. Many of us closed off our capacity to know all of the beauty and terror that was a part of being fully human. It is time to remember that your soul is part of the living soul of the Earth and to ask your heart to expand enough to allow you to take the first step back.

Today, and every day, take the first step toward a full remembering of who you are as a citizen of the Earth by awakening to and allowing everything that is present in the moment. Do not follow anyone else’s path. Your human-ness is uniquely yours. The gifts you have to give to life today can only be fully realized by taking your own first step. Be grateful to play your part in this unfolding universe. And wait to take that second step until this first step is completed. Do not rush yourself. Remember that there you may take this first step over and over.