When was the last time you heard someone say:
- “I’m afraid to tell you something because I don’t want to destroy our friendship.”
- “I’m afraid to tell him because it might offend him.”
- “I’m afraid to do that.”
- “Ah, come on – what are you afraid of?”
- “I will not get vaccinated, because I’m afraid of what is in that stuff.”
Or maybe ‘fear’ has rattled in your mind, but no one has heard you say it. The Oxford Dictionary defines the noun ‘fear’ as “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause you pain, or pose a threat.” So, what is it?
I was doing some research for a new novel when I came across this:
“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I remain.”
This is a Bene Gesserit mantra, written by Frank Herbert in his 1965 science fiction masterpiece DUNE. But its origin goes back to William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:
“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
On Saturday, March 4, 1933, with the United States battling a crippling economic and psychological depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the country. He famously paraphrased Henry David Thoreau when he said, “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
So, what is fear? What is its purpose in your life and mine?
Veronica Roth, the author of the Divergent trilogy, wrote, “Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up.”
John Lennon said, “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life.”
Leigh Bardugo, the author of the young adult Grishaverse novels, wrote, “Fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.”
Dan Brown wrote in The Da Vinci Code, “Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.”
Madame Curie said, “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
Nelson Mandela said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
Then what do we do in the face of fear?
Roy T. Bennett, the author of The Light in the Heart, wrote, “Courage is feeling fear, not getting rid of fear, and taking action in the face of fear.”
- Lockhart, the author of the young adult novel We Were Liars, wrote, “Always do what you’re afraid to do.”
Fear can hold you back from success – and at the same time, propel you toward success. Some argue that fear is the ‘Great Equalizer’ but I’m not so sure. Maybe instead of running from our fears, we should run to them and confront them.