Fear for a cause

I find that fear can be so much fun, I mean I hate it when it hits me, but the laughs after are excellent. Fear is a game and it can be played with a smile. In the song 'Innocense' Bjork mentions the ease of being fearless, and then she tries to explain the joy of realizing fear again. If we dive into experiences and taste lifes fullness, we will best recognize the purpose and wonder of fear.

We quickly develop a fear of heights as babies, and many more fears work their way into our minds as we grow up. We each work through fears at our own pace, and it is the fears that we have overcome which empower us and move us to new challenges. Some fears should be respected even if they lose their grip on us. You may grow to be comfortable standing on a steel beam 44 stories above the ground, but you should still wear a harness and tether for the occasional slip. We should have a bit of discomfort looking into the eyes of a tiger and there should be a fear that keeps you from walking up to one in a jungle.

There are fears that hold some people back and they miss out on ordinary parts of life; luckily psychology has found various ways to work past those interferences. At the other end of the spectrum there are some people who have been through or seen a lot and have been left with little to fear. These people may grow to miss the exilhiration that fear brings, and they will go searching for thrills which may endanger their lives just to get the rush of fear. 

I can only recommend a life balanced between letting fear stop you from everyday living and thrill seeking that brings you too close to ending your experiences without a safety net. If one sees life as a challenge to get in as many experiences as possible, then they will live their life in a way that does not leed them closer to loss of life and limb, while they seek out ways to get in thrilling adventures that excite the senses. Jump out of an airplane wearing a parachute, climb a rock wall using gear that will catch you if you slip. Seek out thrills that will remind you of the joy that fear can bring, but take time to learn the precautions that can be taken and use them. Go through training or take the steps that allow you to learn along the way without destroying your body. You will thank yourself for the action filled life and the times you were given fear that did not end up in death or dismemberment. 

All of us can see how the Earth brings fear through the adventures of things like weather, sickness and death. It is good to know that these things exist as part of our lives, and to be respectful of the power underlying each. If there is a snow storm, then maybe you should consider avoiding swimming in the nearest ice covered lake. If there is a virus killing off a portion of the population, then maybe you should be a little extra sanitary and take reasonable precautions around people. We can guard against weather and illness, but as of yet we cannot stop either from being connected to death. We can't even separate living a healthy life from death. 

Fear of death is a major driving factor behind the thrill of many of our adventures and it can cause us to act out our lives in unique ways. But death need not control our actions, because a person who knows death as a part of every life will be able to live with a full awareness of its certainty while taking in a wide range of experiences along their path to death. It starts by recognizing the difference between fear that stifles our actions without reasonable cause, and fear that simply protects you with knowledge of certain dangers based on experiences and learning. Experiences start as a child when the parents create appropriate adventures and allow their child to test fear through reasonable action and reaction experiments. From there we push at and pull back from things that scare us throughout our development. The more non life threatening adventures we experience that spark fear, the better equipped we can be for living the balanced life. 

The other side of the balance is knowing why we are afraid and allowing logical reason guide our actions based on what we understand. We should always attempt to know why something should be avoided or not based on our experiences or the most prevelant research results. We should not jump into action based on one person's opinion without learning a bit on the subject for ourselves. Action without understanding is the equivalent of being a cog in a machine without knowing what the machine is doing. 

Fear can make us act out in horrible ways, it can make us cower and shake in our boots. We can let it control us or we can stand up to it with our history of experiences and our knowledge. We can live balanced lives while entwining fear into our new experiences without putting ourselves in grave danger. We can control our own existence, to be functional parts of the world machine and know how our actions affect our surroundings. Know fear for its value, let it control you within reason, but do not let it hold you down.

Love, PEACE