Monday, January 25, 2016

Fear, My Dear... I'm afraid

Fear... It's what really drives most people.  Fear is something that is basal.  We feel it the moment we pop out of the womb.  "Where am I?  What am I doing here? Who the hell is that? Why is it so cold?"  These are basic, fundamental, fear-inducing questions that we face from day one. We need safety.  We need comfort.  We need these things inherently to move forward. We need them now. We don't know what safety and comfort really are until we've found them... rarely do we find them.

Eventually, we learn to manage fear.  We never get over it, we simply manage it.  By whatever means necessary, we attempt to control something that we are born to be unable to control.  We do this within the confines of that which does not kill us.  We act out as much as we can and piss all over any kind of moral compass.  If it feels good, do it.  Sometimes we find the things that feel too good... that encompass our minds and make us forget the fear.  And we forget for so long that when something happens to rush us back to reality, we turn in to newborns again and forget all we've learned and we are simply small little beings who are afraid of everything.

Then, we must re-learn how to manage the fear.  But this time, it has to be different.  It has to be fool-proof.  We can't go back to fear... not like this.  Our entire life is made up of cycles of time where we learn the wrong way to deal with fear and then it comes screaming back and then we have to learn a new wrong way... the cycle is never ending.

Why the psychology lesson?

No matter what you do in life, you are always going to be afraid of something.  You try.  You fail.  You try again.  You fail again.  My message here is one that I wish I could convey to myself.  And that message is this:  odds are good, you are going to fail.  Odds are good, you'll never escape fear on every level.  Odds are good, if you don't try, you'll never succeed. Odds are good, if you let fear run your life, you will never be able to truly live.

Take the chance. Put the emotion away and think with rationale.  Assess the risks, but don't let risks rule your brain.  Yeah, you usually have a 50/50 shot.  You either win or you lose.  And if you lose, you try again... but, if you should happen to be lucky enough to win... well, then you can look fear in the face for at least a few fleeting seconds and say, "hey, fuck you."