On fear ….
There are different kinds of fear, one that will push you where you want to go and the other, will paralyze you to your very core.
We live in a very highly anxious society, going from job to job like a hamster in a hamster wheel. As America being one of the richest country where your dreams used to come true, we also pay a high price in our happiness department. Depending on what state you live in, your goal, upbringing, family culture, and society, you are more prone to stress, mental health issues, or depression than the person standing next to you in the subway.
Everything that we do is stringed together like the spider’s web, where the web itself represents as your fears and failures, and the middle (of the web), represents your goals and dream. We need to acknowledge that to be able to reach the core, we have to deal with our emotions, baggage from the past, and our fear of failures, while also trying to ward off “things” aka life’s curve ball from getting to your “web” aka life.
On my own journey
Although with the occasional monster underneath my bed, or getting lost in public, I've never really known fear as a child. I guess life as a kid in a suburb is all rainbows and unicorns tied in a big bow. Being an only child, I was also sheltered, everything was given to me, and I've never experienced working hard for anything. I wasn’t a poster kid of spoiled brats you see in social media nowadays, but I was the kid who easily gives up, knowing that there must be an easy way of doing things.
I’ve always chosen easy, rather than doing what is needed for my future.
As an adult, fear played an integral part of my life and still is. Although it wasn’t paralyzing, it’s the one thing that makes me question everything as my young self can attest.
How am I supposed to do the “big” things in life, if my life as a young adult was all fun and dandy?
I started very late in life to figure out what I wanted, and I still am stuck with fear. Our fears will never leave us, but our fear if used differently, is a powerful emotion that can catapult us to an undetermined location. Our fear stems from thinking about too much about the future aka “the what if’s”. I know because I’m a frequent flyer in this dreadful place. Every. Single. Day. It’s the foreplay that we do before we ultimately play our cards, that is if we ever overcome our fear.
I still have a lot of fear hanging in the corner, a constant reminder that it’s real, it’s never going to disappear, not by a long shot. Have you met someone who doesn’t have a single fiber of fear in their body? NO!!
We have a lot of fears. My kid fear is now a fully formed adult fear — fear of disappointing people who supported and gave me a chance, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, etc…. But, I will not sit idle, knowing that I can do better, that I still have so much to offer, that regardless of the past, I still have the future and that future still needs to be written.
The big emotion
Fear can control you, like a cancer, it can spread uncontrollably. But fear itself can offer protection, it detects threatening stimuli. Like when our amygdala senses danger, our hair stands up to avoid things that may put us in harms way.
Fear is one of the integral part of what makes us all human along with anger, disgust, joy and sadness. But in fear, you can be your own person. To know what we are made of, sometimes, we need to switch off that fear…. that prevents us from moving forward, to explore the unknown. Some fear is a mere reaction of an external stimuli that is only imagined, imagined or not, it is still fear.
I call it a big emotion because it encompasses all our day to day decision making. At this time, I am still stuck in the life that I have so much plans for. Some people may find this ridiculous, just make a move.
We all just playing or own version of chess.
But now, it’s my turn …….
Thank you for reading. Stay safe and Live well!!
