Nature of Fear

When it was time for bed, as I got to the doorway of my room and after staring intently to see if anything was moving under my bed, I took a few steps back to get a running start and jumped to my bed without touching the carpet.

This wasn’t the lava monsters game, this was the result of my sister wanting to watch the old TV “Are you Afraid of the Dark,” and my mind not being able to comprehend the impossibility of actual monsters lurking under my bed waiting to pull me under. The long-jump was a consistent part of my bedtime routine for quite a long time… I remember thinking that the odds of something pulling me under was low, but that the cost of taking the precaution against it was also low, and so I might as well pay the small price and be safe, right?

I wasn’t scared of the area beside my bed during the day, I could be found there with my Legos spread all over the floor on a regular basis, but as soon as it was dark, everything seemed to change. In the light I could see clear to the wall under my bed, but in the dark I couldn’t, and therefore couldn’t be certain what could be there.

I don’t know why so much time passed without testing it. I could have easily gotten a flashlight and started from my doorway to illuminate what was beneath my bed, but I didn’t, or didn’t for a long time. The illogical possibility of a monster under my bed at some point turned into the more logical intruder that was laying in wait under my bed. I remember being very quiet, so that I would be able to detect any breathing that wasn’t my own. I’m not sure how long that test ran, but at some point, I realized that the window carried much more uncertainty than under my bed, because what was outside waiting to break through the window would could not be detected by listening for breathing or movement.

I remember laying in bed so that I could watch the window, and imagined ways I could stop all the possible intruders—pushing them back through the window, attacking while they were still breaking in, or screaming to alert the rest of the family so they could prepare for themselves even if I couldn’t save myself… yes, those were some pretty heroic fantasies… but I wasn’t inventing the possible threat in order to fantasize myself as a hero, the heroic complex was in reaction to the perceived threat, which was no more than uncertainty… probably.

According to the bureau of justice statistics, “An estimated 3.7 million household burglaries occurred each year on average from 2003 to 2007. In about 28% of these burglaries, a household member was present during the burglary. In 7% of all household burglaries, a household member experienced some form of violent victimization.”

So, was I wrong to be worried? It’s debatable… for an adult, but overwhelming for an adolescent to consider.

What does a child expect when they check the mail box? Well, for me as a child I always hoped that it was a birthday card with money or a Lego magazine… the rest was of no significance to me.

The mailbox is great example of a source of uncertainty, and it is our attitude towards and approach of uncertainty that determines our happiness in life.

The word “fear” has one of the most preserved phonetic journeys in its evolution through several different languages, from one of the oldest traceable languages, Proto-Indo-European which goes back to about 4500 BC, till modern English. Though it was phonetically preserved, it’s meaning changed substantially. In its original context, fear meant, “to try or risk.” Which evolved to mean “danger,” then “harm, distress, or deception,” then “ambush,” to today, where it means, "calamity, sudden danger, peril, sudden attack."

It’s interesting how the word became vilified and negatively emotionally charged, when really it was just the ordinary process of life of trying something new.

Correlated to the word “fear” is the word “happiness.” Happy comes from the root “hap,” which means "chance, fortune." Putting meaning or fear and happiness together, the question surfaces, “what are the chances of good fortune if we don’t try?”

So, we see an opportunity to try, (fear), and we notice what we could gain from it, (happiness), the only thing left is the commitment to try despite the risk.

our ability to confront the uncertainty of the unknown with hope that if we try that good fortune will come from it?

The word “courage,” comes from the Proto-Indo-European “kerd,” which is “heart,” which since 1300 AD has meant, "Heart, as in seat of emotions," hence "spirit, temperament, state or frame of mind."

There is a frame of mind where we meet fear calmly and objectively with whether the risk is worth the possible fortune. Some fortunes are not worth it, and that’s fine, but we should be sure that the actual worth of the possible fortune is the reason we don’t want the take the risk, and not because we lack the commitment. There are many things we want in life, to do better at work or in school, get in shape, spend less, quit an addiction, but despite the worth we see in them, and the risks we think we are willing to take, we just can’t commit. Is it a lack of courage? Is there something in our state or frame of mind that stops us?

If our courage or frame of mind has more influence than our ability to assess value or stop risks, that begs the questions, “How is our mind framed?” and, “How can we reframe our mind to do what we actually want to do?”

Whether we like it or not, so much of our mind was framed before our ability to remember was present. So much of our mind was framed with what seemed to work given the circumstances we didn’t creating, and reacting with what we were told or had seen work, not our own idea. Coping mechanisms are learned behavior. We innately act not react, and coping is a reaction. When frustration comes our natural instinct is to identify and solve the problem, but when we see someone else yell or punch a wall and seem to be satisfied, it makes us wonder. Especially when failure is the door for ridicule and shame, going on the Hero’s journey to slay the dragon of the unknown is a lot more risky, especially if even after slaying the dragon we are still ridiculed and shamed. Society influences us to try its way first before trying our own. Therefore, we do what we have seen, and to cope with frustration we punch a wall, and now we have a broken hand, and still whatever caused the original frustration…

So, we are put in a circumstance we didn’t choose, cope with it in a way we didn’t invent, and missed the opportunity to build self-confidence through trying what we think would be best, and learning from what happens.

Was it me that choose to watch that scary show that had a huge impact on my early outlook on life and possibly a long-term impact on my ability to fall asleep? How would my life been different had I not fallen asleep in class throughout all my years in school? It doesn’t matter, learning is not time-limited, in fact looking back on our past calmly and collected, we are able to extract what can be learned from it.

If we let them, our festering wounds will steer our life more than our growing convictions. It may take longer to find deep convictions if we are fixated on avoiding pain instead of finding something worth enduring pain for. Running away from where we think we want to be least is different than running towards where we want to be most.

I think the greatest indicator of our future happiness in life is our attitude towards and approach of uncertainty, and the greatest indicator of our success in life is our attitude towards and reaction to pain. I have a friend that is still angry about a TV show their older siblings “made them watch,” and it is unbelievable to me how heavy the burden of carrying that resentment has hindered their ability to have success in their life. For me, I’m glad I had to come to terms with fear in a very easy form from a young age. The only thing bad about it, is that my ability to courageously stand on the precipice of the known and jump head-first into the unknown, has probably crossed the line between courage and stupidity way too many times… but looking back, I regret more the chances I didn’t take than the stupid ones I did.

What does fear do in your life?

What do you spend most of your time fearing?

What has all the time and energy you have spent preparing against what you fear accomplished?

Looking back, if I were going to stay up for hours staring at the window each night, I might as well gotten in some reading. The more I stared at the window, thinking of nothing but what could come through it and hurt me, the more reasons I came up with to keep staring. If I would have read books instead, my mind would have been caught up with those stories and insights, and I would have found more reasons to keep reading. Our mind is like a garden, ideas are seeds, and attention and action are water and sunlight. When we realize our garden has more thorns than fruit and flowers, we should go through and see which plants should be plucked up, and prevent planting them again by figuring out what seeds each thing comes from.

Our life shouldn’t be controlled by alliterations and catchy maxims. “Better safe than sorry,” it too vague to be useful, because what we mean by safe, and what we mean by sorry, will determine what we do to be safe, and at what lengths we avoid being sorry.

In our modern world, we are beyond the small-town life where everyone knows everyone else, and in this connected world, we rely on image and labels. Our application for a job is purely on the image of ourselves we can draw with labels, and more times than not won’t even get an interview if our image on paper isn’t good enough. I have found that image and labels are the central theme of most modern-day fear.

It causes a lot of strain to figure out and maintain to others the imagine of us we think they want to see, while figuring our and maintaining the image of ourselves we want to see. There are real things we ought to be careful to protect in life, but no amount of care can guarantee others will see us a certain way, or even that we will see ourselves in a certain way. We might as well just focus on what we want to do, instead of what we want to try and prove.

Searching for true certainty, that a valuable action actually has value is lifelong journey, where we get closer and closer to maximizing the value of it as we continuously test and improve the action. Searching for the certainty that someone sees us a certain positive way and not in a certain negative way, no matter how well-intended we convince ourselves our intention for doing it is… it could lead us anywhere, depending on what lengths we are willing to go, it could lead all the way to the Orwellian 1984 nightmare:

“Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?”

It is this search for certainty in how someone sees us, that has twisted the word “love,” to mean attention, gifts, service, physical touch, words of affirmation, all of which as ends and not means are just symbols of obedience. This isn’t to say that love doesn’t often spontaneously and naturally produce those things, but they are possible by-products, not love itself.

Love is hoping the best for someone else, and what positive investment has no conditions, like respect or gratitude, where the resource is not principally time or energy, but compassion and humanity. Trust on the other hand is a conditional positive investment, where the principal resource is time and energy. There is no reason not to hope the best for everyone, and that doesn’t have anything to do with where we want to actually invest our time, energy, and resources.

Let what value and meaning you see in life frame your mind more than the uncertainty of resisting the order of the known, or the chaos of the unknown.