(Home)

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear. It something isn’t it. It gets you in all the right places and manages to seep into all the wrong ones. Evolutionarily speaking, fear is a tool. It is the reason that our species has survived. Our brains adapted due to fear, our senses reflexively input our environment as a means to alert us to potential fears, and the adrenaline that fear releases is a high that we return to again and again. And yet, as Emerson acknowledges, fear keeps us from so much. When we have outmoded our sensory alerts for inbox updates, what role does fear have in our society today?

While we may be living a few generations off from the “age” in which Ralph Waldo Emerson first made this observation, I would ponder that fear plays no less a role in our lives today. But is it necessary?

Love is the typical counterbalance for fear. Religions have for centuries suggested that love and faith can heal fear. But in my own life I have noticed that the times when I have felt the most love are also the ones that have brought me to closest to my fears. Fear that your parents are going to be okay - mine got into a plane crash in the Adirondack Mountains when I was 15. Fear that the girl you are in love with is going to love you back, and if and when she does, that the feeling will last. Fear that you’ll never achieve your dream, the job that fits, the future that is bright. These are a few of my fears, but in stating them here and in looking a little closer at them (we only have 15 minutes) I find myself wondering if fear isn’t a sense in itself, making the moment in which we experience it more vibrant. Sharpening the edge of our lives, so that we can more acutely experience what lies on the other side of fear.

So with a metaphorical minute left, I ask you not to be afraid, but to remember to embrace fear for what lies beyond.

—

Above is a response to the first of 30 daily writing prompts that are a part of Domino Project’s Self-Reliance challenge. Join the twitter conversation #trust30.