Living in harmony with fear

In today's media being fearless is a trait that is often worshipped. Choices that are made that go against the grain is considered fearless as the decision-maker doesn't care about the consequences of that particular choice.

Songs, poems and even blog posts like the one you're reading. glorify being fearless, and with good reason. A person who fears the consequences of his decisions will never make a decision at all, which certainly isn't better than making a bad decision. So clearly fearless people are wont to be the most successful of all; are they not?

Well not always. I'd say a successful person can be fearless on command. Perpetually being fearless will cause you to make rash decisions soon, which will end up causing problems for you, ergo making you unsuccessful. Knowing when to consider how your actions will have consequences is the trait of a wise man indeed(And woman, please don't cancel me on Twitter).

Much like death, fear is ostracized in society. Being afraid of the consequences of an action is called cowardly, and men, in particular, are taught to be brave, fearless and be alpha males(that's a rabbit hole I'm not looking forward to going down). Fear is considered a sign of a weak person.

The basic fact that these people don't seem to understand is that fear is biologically hardwired into us for a reason. Fear protects us from dangerous, even fatal situations on a daily basis. The cavemen of ancient times knew that running into a sabre-tooth tiger and trying to pet it wouldn't result in any good. Why? Because of fear. You could walk into the middle of a highway with speeding cars, that's fearless, isn't it. And yet people don't seem to do that every day because of the fear of getting run over.

Having no fear is like having no pain. At first, you think, wait! This is great! I don't need to be afraid of getting hurt anymore, You get bruises, bumps and fractures with no pain and you're pretty pleased with yourself, that is of course until one day you drop dead with no warning. Why? Because the pain you feel is the warning, pain makes you want to take an action immediately to stop the pain(also the cause of damage to your body). If you walked on broken glass you wouldn't know it until you get sepsis and died of an infection.

No one likes feeling pain or fear and yet it is a necessity. Being devoid of fear is a fool's errand and will result in more bad than good. However, I'm not saying that you should be fearful of every little choice that you ever make, because that is the extreme on the other hand and will result in the aforementioned scenario where you can't decide at all.

The fact of the matter is; fear like so many other things in life has to be balanced. Fear the consequences of big actions and adjust the action according to that fear, be fearless of actions where you know for sure that you're in the right. Taking a complete shot in the dark with something big is a fool's errand. Sure the odd one or two exceptions will be there but you have to be careful.

For people whose fear dominates them, a piece of advice from me would be to understand your fear rather than tossing it away without any understanding. We fear what we can't understand often. How do you understand your fear then?

Think about it. Is it rational in any sense, does it take root in a misconception of yours, how do your peers feel about it etc. I'm not saying that every fear can be tackled like this, but this should at the least help you to gather a bit about why you fear a thing. 

Rational fears are the worst. They are fears which are actually quite reasonable and sometimes it isn't the best idea to try to ignore them. Rational fears can't be avoided and you must fight them as long as they pursue you. There is however a chance that your mind perceives an irrational fear as a rational fear. In such moments speaking with peers and maybe a therapist can offer great relief and solace.

Irrational fears can and must be cleared by using its very opposite, Logical and rational thinking.

When I was younger, I used to be deathly afraid of the dark. I'd hate going into cinema theatres(still do for different reasons) and other dark places. As I grew older, I realised that I wasn't exactly scared of the dark, after all, who's scared of the colour black? (other than racists). No, I was afraid of what I couldn't see.

As human beings, we take pride in being able to know. When we don't know about something, we tend to get flustered and fearful because we are in unfamiliar territory. To my young mind, there could be anything in my house!

A ghost or a ghoul could ambush me on the way to get a glass of water. A serial killer could be sitting on the couch waiting for me(yes irrational I know). One day I thought, wait that makes no sense why would anything like that happen in reality and gradually dispelled the fear by confronting it. 

And that is when you must truly be fearless. Sometimes it takes all your courage to acknowledge your fear, to not ignore it; and yet I say the man who accepts his fear and defeats it is much greater than a man than one who lets it take hold of him and lives his life subservient to it.