On Fear…

Fear has always been viewed as a bad bad thing; I can understand why, I am not really arguing. Or am I?

People always go on and on about how destructive fear is, and how it keeps us from living experiences to the fullest or enjoying our lives and all that. People always criticize those who succumb to their fears and idealize those who overcome them. They have even come up with brilliant phrases praising those who rise above their fears, describing them as brave and courageous.

As much as everyone seems to have agreed on that, society seems to promote fear! How else would you explain why people refrain from saying or doing so many things!! Perhaps even more when it comes to women! Women are not encouraged to be bold, it is somehow claimed that it reduces their femininity or something; they always have to have some fears for their men to conquer!! But then again, is society manipulating fear to promote courage and bravery??! I’m babbling!

I think fear isn’t all that bad! As crippling as it is, fear keeps us from doing stupid stupid things, which we might view later as horrible mistakes. Fear forces us to consider consequences… in an awful awful way, I admit, but it gets the job done much better and more effectively than wisdom. Fear can be useful at times I suppose.

Look at children, they have no fear. Their cute little minds have not yet grasped the concept; it means absolutely nothing to them. Look at how many times they pull the funniest yet most stupid stunts that cause them to repeatedly fall and hurt themselves. They cry their hearts out, as well as they parents’, and they simply do them over and over again until they develop some certain understanding! Yeah yeah, learning and developing and all, but it’s too much pain as well, at least for someone who’s feeling as sore as I am right now, so spare me!

I have been a child for quite a long time that way; I still am in a sense. I face my fears and confront them by doing exactly what they would normally stop me from doing. If I had a nickel for every time I did something because I was too stubborn to succumb to my fears, I’d be a millionaire! I hate admitting that most of them were stupid things that I would regret had I believed in regret.

I would like to meet the wise man who said that the best way to conquer your fear is to face them and share my experience with him and tell him he should have added that sometimes your fears are there for a reason and that sometimes you need to spend more time finding out the reason instead of proving your fears wrong with utter ignorance motivated by stubbornness.

My dad used to push me to go ask for directions whenever we got lost in a foreign country to teach me that I should be daring enough, and well, to hide his own embarrassment for getting us lost in the first place. He always wanted me to be the brave boy he never had, but he realized when it was too late that he forgot to teach me how to listen to my fears. In his own way, he had shaped me into a girl admired for how different she was, problem is her uniqueness was not that easy to appreciate once one had to constantly deal with it.

All my life, people would admire/criticize me saying I am “garee2a awy” because I would bluntly speak my mind!! Well, they can rest assured now, I stopped; words seem to struggle to come out of my mouth thank you very much!

But I am still too stubborn to listen to my fears and reason with them!! I still dare them and do the opposite thing just to prove that I am better and higher; I am vain that way. And today after talking to my “khawafa” friend, I told her that the thing everyone criticizes her for is the exact thing I need to keep myself safe for a while.

So my dear friend, here is to fear, it’s not always that bad.