How Fears Develop
There have been talks about fears and phobias, and how they
affect life. Fear is really the misconception, the rejection,
and the dread of life.
There are thousands of life definitions available around.
Often, these meanings seek or require a happy, if not perfect,
life in this world. We are urged to seek out a paradise or a
niche of refuge where we can build our utopia or ideal world.
But what really is life? If we honestly study human drama in
history, we would see that real life is the concoction of good
and bad, sad and happy. How to be happy in all these
circumstances is what you make out of your life. We all create
our life meanings. We cannot just borrow others’ meanings or
get one from a book. We discover real life through actual life
encounters. How we end up after each ordeal gives us our real
life.
Life is a concoction of both extremes. Real life entails going
through these ordeals. When you reject this idea and look for
other life meanings — the kind where you live happily ever
after — fears start to develop. You begin to look for fairy
tale stuffs in life and reject the ones you actually have. Fear
comes in, rejecting what is real. People who live in war zones
have a realistic idea of life: You live now; you may die the
next moment. They see that life is temporary — which is the
truth. Thus, they are prepared to die anytime. Fears are still
intact, but considerably lessened.
People who reject the truth are afraid to look at scenes of
death or tragedy. The more they reject them, the more the fear
grows within them. Many books on fears tell their readers to
avoid seeing violence. You ought not to look for violence and
watch it, but you ought not to close your eyes to it when there
is one right under your nose. Life will always show you both
extremes.
Mother Theresa was a non-violent person. Yet, she watched
injustice and violence everyday, right where she was. She
didn’t feel fear for these daily scenes; instead she felt love
and concern in the midst of it all. She knew and lived a real
life. Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi were for non-violence.
Yet they found real meaning and real life as they were caught
in the middle of chaos and turmoil. These excellent people
lived the real life. They even conquered others’ fears.
The rejection of the real life is the start of real fears.
Fearful and phobic people refuse reality and build their own
fantasy world.