Fear is good… right? It’s a built-in "alarm system" that aims to keep us from danger. Fear is exceptionally important for humans. It tells us when a situation is not a good one, it tells us that we shouldn't jump off a tall building and it tells us that running away from a charging rhino is probably a good idea. While the latter of these two threats is relatively rare in our modern lives, we still find a fear expression in people who fear being caught or beaten.
The 3 types of fears according to the fearless Stephen King:
- The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm.
- The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm.
- And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there
However I prefer John Lennon's "fear and love":
“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”
So how do you express your fear, or do you keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others?
