About fears

Have you ever noticed how fearful we all are? As kids we are scared and thus hit first, so as not to be hit ourselves. Small boys don’t really know what to do when they see others cry, so they ignore it or laugh at tears as a sign of weakness. Later on, as teenagers we are scared about what others will think about our looks. We fear that having no boyfriend / girlfriend will decrease our social likeability. Then, when we do get one, we are afraid he/she will leave us. If this doesn’t happen, we are afraid we are being cheated on. After we start an argument and end up alone, we fear nobody will love us anymore. When someone finally turns up, we fear we are not liked for who we really are, but for some obscure reasons that have nothing to do with our real selves (such as our parents, our money, our cars or because we look good on TV). We fear getting married because we will be confined to a double loneliness, we fear a divorce because it will leave us alone. Our children’s illnesses scare us because of the death they entail, we fear our parents’ aging because it will leave us facing the care they gave us as children, we fear our sickness because it gives us that sense of helplessness, of not being in control. We plunge into jobs to feel safe again, and then we continue to fear that our performance is mediocre, that our boss does not like us, that we get less money than others, that our outfit is not “office” enough and of course, that changing the job will only bring on the same fears.

And so we continue on our spiral of anxiety. Only in some brief moments do we discover the beauty of life and the hundreds of good things that happen to us every day, that give it meaning and make it worth living, with no unnecessary time spent on worrying. Life just has a way to bring a smile on our faces again, but more often than never we choose to ignore it, because fearing and worrying has been ingrained so deep in our minds.

I wrote this as a “thank you” note for only a few friends who let me know today, in own little ways, that they cared. It was enough to make me smile.