Fear is the most important thing
It can make or break you…
I recently saw the movie Dune. Well, everyone knows about it. It was a good movie. One dialogue from it specifically stuck with me: “Fear is the mind-killer”. Even though I completely agree with the dialogue, I believe fear is our friend or enemy depending upon the situation.
During challenging times where we have to perform, like exams, competitions, etc fear really is the mind-killer. It hits me so hard that, all the skills that we have, go to waste if we are nervous during the actual day. This happens to everyone, and we call it performance pressure. I used to rock in sports when we were just playing for fun. But, whenever I was in focus, I just completely lacked that spark. We all have experienced this in our life.
But, let’s not ignore the fact that fear is the major driving factor in our lives. The only situations in which we thrive are when we are actually fearful about something. We study because of the fear of failing in exams. We work hard in our job for the fear of not losing it. We run from the hurtful things because of just fear.
But, what happens when there is no fear in our lives. We land into what is called the worst place on the planet — our comfort zone. The Comfort zone is a place where we have no fears and nothing to lose. Our necessities are being met. We have what we imagined to have in our lives, a few years back and we don’t have any new aspirations. The aspirations which we have, seem too hard to accomplish that we do not want to go after them. It just seems too much trouble going after them. We decide to stay in this zone until we get that fear back again. Now, what we overlook, is one very important fact, which is- everything that goes up, has to come down. What I mean by this is that growth in life is not a choice but a necessity. Consider life as a rocket, you go up and up and up and suddenly you cool off the engines. You think, that you have come too far above, so going upwards is not much important now. But, as soon as you do this, you begin to fall back, and you notice it until it is too late and you are close to the ground. This also means, that if you go high enough, you will float forever in the space. This high, I think would be equivalent to Jeff Bezos's life. I don’t think that man needs any more growth in his life.
I have been very fortunate that I am a big overthinker and I think about the most unfavorable situations for me and think about what would I do in those situations. I am at a comfortable place in my life and I am highly grateful to God for everything I have, but I know this is not going to stay forever. There is no life without storms in it. I know, one day I am going to be outdated because the world is expanding every day like our universe and it is not stopping for anybody, not you not me. So, I have this fear of losing things that I have in my life and becoming someone who is pretty outdated and has no value to add to this world. I might have enough money for today, but I know that is not enough for the time when the family grows or time changes due to inflation. Due to all these factors, I try to expand my horizon and jump into all the possible spheres and gain as much knowledge as I can.
But, there are many people in this world, who do not care about this at all. They just enjoy their lives paycheck to paycheck and have lots of fun in it. This, I believe is not good for the long run. People gain a lot of money and lose it all by the time they are old. People who are very successful at the start of their careers, often lose out very soon because they reach their comfort zone quite early. Due to this, I believe fear is a very important part of our lives. Without fear, we would just stay in our comfort zone.
Fear is like pain. Pain is a very important stimulus that tells our body to move away from the thing causing it to save itself from some damage. Fear acts in the same way. But like pain, too much fear is also dangerous. It is important to lose the fear and take action and risks in our life. I believe everything, just depends on fear. The things we do are a result of which fear won the battle- the one which caused us to fear “what would happen if I stay here?” or the other one which causes us to fear “what would happen if I leave this sweet spot?”. Someone righteously said, we have to move from the lower peaks to actually get to the top. We definitely need to lose some things in life, but we need to weigh what we are going to gain in exchange for them.
