I'm afraid

I'm afraid. I'm afraid of a lot of things. Many things trigger my anxiety in an instance. I see no way around when fear consumes me. It's easy to say, "embrace your fears," but they burn you out. The closer you get to them, the more you get burnt. Embrace them? It is like embracing fire. A lot of things in this world... No, no. A lot of significant things in this world happened because of fear and a lot of things which could've changed history did not happen, thanks to fear. 

Fear - A strong feeling that clouds the intellect and limits one's capabilities. I tell myself a thousand times that fear will not change the outcome, or do me any favour, but I end up falling in it's trap. Every single time I tell myself I'm strong, I'm not afraid of something, the more I'm with it and the more fear I experience. Fear of loss, failure, a future happening, a certain circumstance, a past memory occuring in the mind, so many things that I can't count. 

But, none of these scare me as much as fear itself. The fact that I'm in the sphere of fear makes me afraid. Mind takes a fight or flight mode so many times in the day. Shallow breaths, faster heartbeats, a sensation that tears the physical body apart in the regions of chest and stomach, a few moments of numbness in the mind, whatever the disaster may be, whatever the intensity maybe, that's how fear is. It leaves us clueless on what to do. 

But are we though? Completely clueless? I feared several things in the past. But they don't exist anymore now. All of those things I feared have passed. Like ghosts passing by, staring at me, right at my face but not touching me. Now that a few years passed, I know that the things I fear now would be gone, making way for new fears. It's still strange to me... How the mechanics of fear work. But I know one thing. No matter what I'm afraid of, if I have a control over it, if I know I can change it, my choice of truth makes an antidote to my fear right away. So, generally, most of the things I'm afraid of are not in my control, which is what makes the fear repetitve. So silly and illogical as it seems, to worry and fear about things not in one's control, but that's what makes fear relevant. 

Let's say, I'm afraid of death, and death is an inevitable occurance which is not in one's own hands. Likewise, maybe losing a job, a loved one; In generally, the occurance of anything that shatters the patters of what our mind is accustomed to invokes fear in us. They say, hope is the only thing stronger than fear. Hope? What do we hope? To become immortal? That one day we will be able to control things? Definitely not. 

Fear cannot last for longer periods of time. Fear is busy jumping from one person to another 'cause there are too many people on this planet. So, fear doesn't particularly control our choices, or does it? 

I may not be able to make a choice of embracing fear, but I can definitely make a choice to stay in that fire and burn while still moving to where I'm supposed to go. I can fear something but can still choose to stay with it and feel it completely while doing what invokes fear in me. I can have that traumatic memory and I'm still alive, doing whatever is in my hands at that moment. 

Fear doesn't like persistent people. In fact fear is not much into making friends. The moment you start taking it everywhere you go and doing everything you do with your fear beside you, it gets bored and slowly, it jumps off you in a much lesser span of time. Maybe it can even choose to not come back to you if you are that boring. 

Hope is like a fireproof jacket. You still feel the heat of fear but you know you won't burn. Hope can help you remember that any fear of yours will have to pass. It makes you realise that there's always a scope of betterment in every aspect that you fear about. That things will get only better eventually.


"There is no illusion greater than fear"


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fear and Pain

Image
  If we look at it, fear has only a single root cause. Pain. We’re afraid of getting hurt.  Even the biggest fear, the fear of death, is because of the pain it brings us.  The pain may not always be physical, but any pain still counts as pain.  If we look at any instance that made us worry, scared, anxious, or terrified, it has something to do with pain.  That exam you thought you might fail, that presentation during which you thought you might be laughed at, that job interview that you wanted to pass so bad, that time when you spent sleepless nights worrying about the health of a family member, all these instances caused fear in you because if they turned real, they would cause you immense pain. Be it physical, emotional, psychological, or mental.  Knowing fear is really important because once we get to know the real nature of it, it redirects us to the root cause.  Now, why are we scared of pain? Of course, because we don’t like pain. I mean, who in ...
Read more

Bored?

Image
  Boredom is a part of life, or, should I say, inevitable part of life? Because life runs on repetitions. We have day after a night and the same night after the day. We eat three times a day, a limited number of food items for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In fact, sometimes the same breakfast even the next day. We barely eat those same 10-11 items that we know to cook or that are available, in the course of time. I think all of you must be already aware of this inevitable phenomenon of our mind. We hate REPETITION! Our mind wants something new everyday. Almost every moment. We start off with certain subjects to study and if we are intelligent, it won't take any long for that subject to lose its charm. We take up a job, won't take much time for our mind to get used to the same boring work and we end up looking for something new already. Same happens with anything we want to do in life. But I wonder. Recently, I've joined a team (Team Ananda) of dynamic people who conduct wor...
Read more