Fear

      What is fear? When asked, most people respond with dying being their greatest fear. For me, it isn’t death or dying. I’m dead, finished, finito. Nothing else really matters at that point as far as my own life is concerned. I’m destined for other things and onwards I go into the abyss!

      I am not one to really think about fears. While from time to time, I feel fearful based on various circumstances in my life, I am not one to really focus on fear. I really had to put a lot of thought into this chapter because I think the majority of people reading this will think I’m lying when I say I have no fears! What I was able to come up with is I guess I have two fears – in no particular order they are fear of being mentally alert while physically incapable; and losing the love of my life. I thought another fear may be being physically capable and mentally incapable, but then what do I care, I’m not aware of what I’m doing, so why worry about it!

      I do not want to make light of fear because it is real and it is present in our day to day lives. I do believe that it is a wasted emotion. If you live in constant fear, then you are not living. You are imagining a future that is not what you want. I use ‘imagining’ because chances are if you are afraid of it, then it hasn’t happened yet. Generally once something happens to us, we become less fearful of it because it is now known. Fear is of the unknown, and the possible circumstances that could result based on our fear. Take my fears for example. If I am trapped in my body and know it, I probably won’t be as afraid. At that point, I’ll need to cope with the circumstances. If I lose the love of my life (and for the record, I’ve lost him twice and have him now and plan on keeping him until one of us dies!), then I will miss him terribly and hope that I will have warm thoughts of our past to get me through it.

      I believe fear is more about not knowing than about the actual situation happening. Most of us have incredible imaginations, and for whatever reason, lean to imagining the worst case rather than the coping mechanism to deal with the situation. The expression walk a mile is one of my favourite expressions. There are people on this planet right now, which are living your fear(s). I wonder if you called them up and asked them “so, how is it?”, how they would respond; and would you believe them if their response was not nearly as catastrophic as you feared?

      I have had a few situations in my life that some would consider catastrophic. I lost my brother when I was twenty-six, he was twenty-nine; I lost three of my family members within five years; I lost my mother when I was thirty-two, she was fifty-three; I went bankrupt when I was thirty-two (no, thirty-two was not a stellar year for me!); I have been unemployed with no income three times in my life, and once I was one month away from living on the street. Those are some fears some people have and have never lived through, and for others, they are not afraid of any of those situations. For me, thinking my brother or mother will die was very sad, but I was not afraid. Going bankrupt and having no money was far scarier to me than death. Weird, huh? I don’t believe so. Death is part of life. It is inevitable. What might be scary is the method in which we die. Will we suffer first? Will it hurt? All of those questions; and the only time we will have an answer is when we die, and then it won’t really matter because we won’t be around to discuss it! My perspective is why focus on what I cannot control.

      Living in fear is non-productive for me. I make decisions that I am unhappy with, I focus on the fear instead of the plan to eliminate the threat, I am not in a positive frame of mind, and generally unpleasant to be around. What a waste! If I die when in that state of mind, I will be very upset! Of course, I’ll be dead, so it won’t really matter, will it.

      Fear is real, and I believe it is how you manage your fear that is important. If you focus on the fear, your outlook and behaviours reflect your fear.

      Throughout my life, when the fear is playing itself out, I often wonder if I made it happen. In this new age, where manifestation is ever present, did I actually manifest my fear, or would it have happened if I didn’t give it so much attention? I really won’t know, but what I do know, is when I was in fear of history repeating itself and I focused on it, it did; when I was in fear of history repeating itself and I thought “not this time” and gave it no attention, it didn’t. Things that make you go hmmmm….

      Operating from a place of fear affects those around us, both personally and professionally. We are unpleasant to be around, a bit of a downer, often we make bad decisions, and our colleagues, who really do not have to put up with our stuff start the gossip train. It compounds our already complicated life. I ask you “what is the point?”!

       If you acknowledge you have the fear and then resolve to either make a plan to mitigate it, or deal with it when it happens, the fear lessens, and may even disappear; and with any luck, you won’t have to walk that mile. Remember fear is false evidence appearing real. Do your best to not make your fears a reality by making a plan to mitigate them and then putting them aside. If the fear becomes reality, then put your plan into action. What I can offer is the reality of my fears were not nearly as scary when they actually happened, and I wasted a lot of time worrying about them long before they came to fruition.