The Existence of Fear

Fear. "An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat." is how the dictionary defines fear. Now if you were to ask me how many times i have been accused of being fearless I would tell you that I have lost count. Which is true. It happens more often than you think. But that's just because the last thing I want is people thinking that I'm afraid of anything. But the select few people in the world that really know me, know as well as I do that I'm not fearless. No one is fearless. Fear is in all of us and while some of us may hide our fears with strength or courage that doesn't mean it isn't there. We're all afraid of something, whether that be failure, judgment, or the dark. We also all react to it differently, some of us try hiding, others try running, and at some point we all eventually learn to stop running, and stop hiding, and actually face our fears. Because if we can't face our fears than they'll never be anything other than that. They'll never go away. But we can't just be fearless by facing our fears. Some of us will always have the same fear, and some of us might even develop new ones after facing old ones. But my point is, that no matter the fear, it's always a hard thing to face for one reason or another. Most everyone has reasons for being afraid of what they're afraid of. A friend of mine helped me realize today that I am afraid of opening up. Now, here's what I'm thinking, for 17 years opening up and talking to people has not come easy, there have been a select few people in my life who I can actually have a conversation with, and the idea of me being afraid of it never drifted into my mind until my friend mentioned that maybe it was fear that was causing me to lock up. And that got me thinking, maybe he was right. After more contemplation on the matter, I came to realize that I don't open up because I'm afraid that I'm burdening people with my issues, and that's the last thing I wanna do. And I'm also afraid of the reaction that I might get. Not exactly judgment, but more like what they'll say if I open up. What if I open up and they say something mean, or even worse, they don't say anything at all? What happens then? Then it would just go more towards me feeling as though I was only burdening them. It is a problem, one that I do need to work on. That's kinda how fear works though, it prevents us from doing something often times. I don't know about you, but I'm not the type to admit what I fear. But it takes a lot of work to make people think you're fearless. So what do you do? Be open about your fears or make it easy for people to think you're fearless? I'm working on finding a happy medium. And until then, fear is something that lives in all of us. Something that we all eventually face. Not easily, but there comes a time in everyones life when what they fear stares them in the face, and you have the option to do one of three things. Run. Hide. Or do something about it.