What are you afraid of?

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. - Bertrand Russell

The defeat of cruelty and the enhancement of wisdom – two things that I would love to have in the Future. To gain that, we need to reduce fear. So, how do we do that?

First, you have to know when you’re afraid. You have to be willing to admit to yourself that you feel fear and to recognize it later when you do feel it. Sometimes, when you are constantly afraid, fear can feel normal. It’s not feeling fear that is weird to you, that creeps you out. Like living next to an airport or highway that suddenly goes quiet. The quiet seems unnatural to you. To reduce fear, you have to admit it is there.

Once you know that you feel fear, you have to figure out what you fear. That’s not always easy. If you have someone with a gun in your face – it’s easy. If you’re two seconds away from crashing into a wall at a hundred miles an hour – it’s easy. If you’re sitting in a diner or a park and suddenly you feel afraid, it’s not so easy.

It may have been something you heard. Things that are a threat to you, like a car crash or a gun shot, can be identified as fearful things. It may be something else that your fear noticed, even if your conscious didn’t. If something has made you afraid in the past, especially if you refused to admit you were afraid and buried that fear under denial, then something that reminds you of that time could trigger the buried fear. A laugh, joyous now but menacing then. A scream, as part of child’s game now but in terror then. The sound of someone falling to the cement, a mere trip now but part of something much worse then. You hear everything that goes on around you. You just don’t pay attention to it, for the most part. But your fear may pay attention to more than you think. Sight, touch, taste, smell – all of these may also hold triggers to the past.

You have two choices in this case. You can figure out what’s causing this from the past and unbury that fear so that it leaves. Or you can force the fear farther down, lock it, so that it can never trigger you again. Whatever works for you, though I don’t have quite the control for the second one.

You know you feel fear. You know why you feel fear. Then you can change the way you feel about that situation. Behavioral modification works, whether it’s by a trained psychotherapist or a person who just knows that when you fall off that horse, you got to get right back in the saddle. Same thing, essentially. You turn a fearful situation into something less fearful through pleasure, triumph, or survival. Or a combination of all three.

You can reduce the fear in your life and enhance your Future with your efforts.