Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.
– Judy Blume, American writer
Courage is not an absence of fear. Courage is having all the fears in you, but knowing full well that they are just that – fears. Not a reality.
Fear is really the most useless thing we carry around, it is an excess baggage that weighs us down and ties us up. It makes us feel insignificant in the face of all the possibilities of things that could go wrong in our lives. And when we dwell on those fears all the time, we actually manifest them. We literally give birth to them.
But when we stroke that fear on its head, tell it that ‘it is OK, I know you care for me but please let me handle this’ and move on and just do whatever that fear would not allow you to do before, you have done two things that are very important in your life, something that changes your life forever.
One, you have extricated fear from being an intricate part of you and compartmentalised it into another entity who you can actually have a conversation with. It becomes your friend, someone who cares for you and who you care for.
Fear becomes a childhood friend who you know can’t help feeling that way because it has undergone so much trauma of past experiences that it gets triggered by even a remote hint of whatever it was that triggered it in the first place. You are no longer that fear. You are someone else who can now negotiate with it, because you can now identify it as a separate entity, not you.
It no longer fogs your brain, it does not freeze your muscles but best of all, it does not have the physical power to stop you because it no longer controls you.
Two, you have now opened the door to an unlimited amount of possibilities. Nothing holds you back anymore because you have become fearless and free. Remember though, don’t confuse fear with caution. Caution guides, while fear freezes you.
You now have the world as your adventure park. You have stopped fearing what is perceived as failure, and so you live your life to the fullest. You take chances you have never taken before, you ask that girl out and don’t care if she says no, you quit the job you hate and work on what you really wanted to do that makes you happy, you swap that course in the university that your parents told you to take and take a course that you really believe in, you don’t go to university just because it is a must and you start working in a firm you believe in to gain real world experience, you start a new project and give it your full heart and soul although everyone else may say you are crazy, you leave the city you know your whole life and go start a farm and live the rest of your life under the sun surrounded by nature.
Freedom from fear is the real freedom in this world. We are all born with that freedom.
Throughout our lives though, we have been taught to fear, to be submissive, to not question what we really want to do but obey what is needed for us to do to ‘fit’ into society. We learn it from parents, schools, universities, society, authorities until we become fearful beings who live our whole lives for others and never really for us. We live a predetermined life without understanding what real happiness is, while we chase that same happiness thinking that happiness is validation from society.
A pat on the back saying, wow nice job, nice hair, nice car, nice house, nice title, nice wealth, we need to hear that voice inside our heads saying ‘you are better than he’ ‘ you have more than he’ … And yet after achieving all that, we wonder why deep down we feel it is not enough. It is never enough, because we keep trying to fill other people’s expectations, not ours.
Fear is also a very good control mechanism by authorities to control the masses. If you can make people fear one another, then you can control them. Make them fear the other man, fear the other nation, fear the one who is different that you, fear of death, fear of viruses, fear we will be left behind, fear of being alone, fear of not having enough, fear of ostracism … so much fear that we stop living and merely exist as herded sheep from one fearful state to another.
I have known fear my whole life. And I can now recognise it for what it is – disempowering. A fearful person is an angry person. And anger destroys happiness. Let’s look within ourselves and identify what fear really means to us. Embrace that child with love and understanding, and set yourself free.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune. Feedback can reach the writer at beatrice@ibrasiagroup.com
