Summary
Fear is a natural human behavior that is exhibited when we feel insufficient or we do not have control over situations. Another cause of fear is when we deal with the unknowns which results in feelings of uncertainty and pain whether perceived or real. Fear can often interfere with how we act in life and can cause paralysis leading, if not resolved, to a decline in our ability act positively. Overcoming fear requires an understanding of what we fear – the cause, history, and associated facts about it and working towards a solution or a framework that would address fear.
Research is key
I used to fear spiders a lot. It started with my mom who was arachnophobic. I still have a little bit of fear of these creatures, but not so much as I once did. Through research, I have learned that a vast majority of spiders are actually not venomous, and I can kill spiders if I willingly want to. In fact, spiders are more afraid of us than we are afraid of them. Also, more people die of car accidents or from smoking than of spider stings, statistically speaking. My fear of spiders stemmed from my initial lack of understanding of these species, but I overcame my fear by getting more understanding about them.
Another example of fear was when I was visiting my aunt’s home. While she was cooking, something went wrong with the hose that provided gas to the stove. Fire broke and my aunt immediately called my uncle and informed him about the situation. I was so scared when I saw the flames. I thought the whole thing was going to explode! So I ran as far as I could from my aunt’s home. While I was running away, I saw my uncle with a fire extinguisher in his hands running the opposite way, towards the fire. I was like, what in the world is he thinking? He was going to face it! He eventually extinguished the fire and the pending disaster I was expecting did not happen.
Reflecting on this traumatic event, I questioned what made me fear the situation? My uncle did not fear it. First, I was only 13 years old. I was inexperienced. When I saw the fire, I panicked. I did not know how the gas stove worked. I was overcome by fear. Contrastingly, my uncle who was an engineer by training knew how the stove system worked. He told us after the event that the first thing he did when he arrived at the scene was shut the valve off. He was also many years older than me and his experience in life gave him the confidence to tackle the ordeal.
A more recent example involved a neighbor who lost his job. Before he was let go of his company, he was really worried about medical insurance coverage for his family. He was paralyzed by the thought. But, what turned out to be his fear became a breeding ground for researching medical coverages for the unemployed. He said, ” it is not as scary as I once thought it would be as there are so many ways that an unemployed person can get medical care.”
He even told me something interesting. He said that when you are under your employer’s medical insurance plan, you are usually charged an overpriced amount, yet you don’t see the amount as the insurance pays for it so you don’t feel it. But when you come in with no insurance, the medical provider actually gives you a cash quote which is usually a lot cheaper (40% to 50% off) than the ones given to the person with insurance. So, by going through the fog filled “mystery,” he learned quite a few things about his ordeal. The light of knowledge cut through the fog of fear.
See, at the basic level, by gaining a little more knowledge, by researching, and by acting on what you learn, you can overcome fear.
Beyond research and education
Despite our technological breakthroughs, we know that there are still many things we don’t understand. I call these the known unknowns. To solve this, one needs to apply faith. Faith is the substance of things hope for, not seen, but are true.
World Population: 7,500,000,000
The world population currently stands as of this writing at ~7.5 billion. Chances are one’s own issues are not isolated, others are also experiencing the same or similar issues, if not greater. One can probably say that there are people who are succumbing or have succumbed to the paralysis of fear. That is true, but there are also many others who (have) overcome them. If you think about the Holocaust where roughly 4 million Jews died, I could only imagine the worse human conditions possible: fear, deprivation, hunger, loneliness, pain, suffering, and hope evisceration all happening at the same time. Despite these extraordinary difficult situations we find many (have) survived and thrived. The survivors exerted so much faith in a better future that they were motivated to keep on moving, overcoming their trials and afflictions. Exercising faith in the past is just as powerful as applying that same faith in to the future.
Faith in a superior being whose knowledge is far beyond ours can also be applied. Some call this divinity, others miracles. As one contemplates the galaxies across the universe, one can only marvel at the order of the universe: worlds revolving in a measured and organized manner. Though randomness or stochasticity exists as many atheists try to prove that there is no all wise knowledgeable being, these randomness are all part of an organized mechanism to which another organized structure comes to being. This explicitly underlie the existence of a being possessing knowledge far beyond ours. Now, if there is a supreme being who has organized these superior things we see, this gives us hope that one day we can understand these things and by doing so, we become more enlightened.