Fear is healthy and perfectly natural. I find it increasingly difficult to find flaws in nature’s designs. This includes the existence of things like bacteria and viruses. Does our planet and everything on it exist only to serve the needs or desires of human beings? I often wonder this. We certainly treat it as if it were.
Fear helps us to make wiser decisions at times. It can steer you in the direction of longevity and quality of life. It can be a strong motivator for one to achieve the unimaginable at times. While I don’t think fear itself is considered a positive, it can certainly drive a lot of motivation to accomplish many positives. Though I certainly am a bigger fan of how positive feels compared to negative, I’m becoming more discouraged that people are losing touch with a basic understanding that the bad must exist along with the good.
The positives and negatives create the balance that is ultimately what nature strives to be and do.
Fear is something that each of us needs to be responsible to keep in check. This is especially true of the kind of fear that is being instilled or driven by another/others. What is their reason for this? This is a crucial question we must ask ourselves in times we are being told by another that we should be cautious or scared.
Most of us are probably used to parents and/or others who care for our well-being, warning us to be careful. In instances like these, it’s easier to understand their intentions (though they too can have irrational fears or thoughts at times). Many of us also grow up in systems of education that have a strict set of rules in place — apparently for our own safety. How much of these rules are in place for the convenience of others and the implementation of structure as much as it is for our own good?
We’re taught to consider others as much as ourselves. While I appreciate the meaning behind this, as well as the growth (both personal and in community) that can come from this approach, it has been used many times to drive control.
Even in adulthood, it’s become very evident that another person or group of persons has the authority over our personal choices and to dictate the quality of life. With the orders to stay home and of social distancing, it makes me wonder about the slow insidious nature of how we are reared to obey rules for our own safety and good. Too often, there’s a veil of fear draped over so much of what we are told is good for us.
To add further insult, we are damned (sometimes even punished) for thinking outside of the mainstream narrative(s). Those of us who practice more critical thinking are often clumped into a larger group of conspiracists (who by the way, I think I still have the right to listen to and make my own decisions, rather than have any information that goes against the main narratives to be censored or banned which has become rampant).
We’ve certainly never been encouraged to question rules and anyone implementing and/or enforcing them, even though asking those very questions is integral to understanding and in turn, deciding with a free will to abide. It seems that we are encouraged to learn and grow so long as the manner in which we do so is agreeable to the ones teaching/informing.
We humans tend to have an incessant need to understand everything (including the workings of nature), that we impede ourselves from just living. We tend to focus on longevity more than quality (or that’s at least what we’re encouraged to aim for). We seek to understand more and more so we can live longer and better lives and while information can be fascinating, it can also cloud the simplicity of life. It’s why many of us are drawn to animals — they remind us of the simple yet most important things in life.
We have the opportunity to learn to trust again — not in what someone or any research tells us but in our own inner compasses of what feels right. It’s naturally inside each one of us and is a guide with which we can choose to live by. If your compass has you feeling scared, start by asking some questions and continue to do what feels right for you (while of course having the sensibility for others to be able to do the same).
