There are fears we fear through our lives, and they play a role in reducing the quality of the joy we experience. When I look back at my life, there are so many fears I have faced. It’s not true that all fears are demons in our head.
Some of the fears we face are true. They are things they happen to people like us.
In this detailed piece on fear, I am going to break down every type of fear I have faced, and perhaps you have faced as well, and how I have tried to deal with it. I had written another piece on how to deal with our fears, which may help.
I still fear a lot of things because my life has been quite difficult, for reasons beyond my understanding, and perhaps all that introspection turned me into a writer that you see on this blog.
The fears that run through our lives:
As a child, we are scared of random things, which may not be true, because as children we can’t differentiate the right from the wrong.
1. The fear of darkness- what are we scared of
The fear of darkness starts as children, and sometimes stays with us throughout our lives. We are scared of the dark because we can’t see what’s there, and that darkness makes us feel that someone or something could harm us.
As a child, I was scared that someone will eat my ears. So, when it would be dark, and time to sleep, I would take some sort of a sheet and cover my entire body, leaving no part outside the sheet so that nobody could harm me. I am 43 at the time of writing this now. I still can’t sleep without being totally covered. My ears are sacred.
Is the fear of darkness an irrational fear? I don’t know.
Perhaps it is, for me. There are people who have been harmed in the darkness. For them, it isn’t. And the fact that criminals use darkness to harm others, makes it a rational fear for the rest of us; a fear that runs through our lives.
2. The fear of failure- fears through our lives
Oh, the never-ending fear of failure. As a child and a student in school, I hated mathematics. It messed up with the whole of my life, and made me an under-confident kid. I was good at English. But nobody really told me to focus on English. Everyone told me to keep focussing on improving at Mathematics- integration, algebra and bullshit like that. Mathematics made me feel that I will entirely fail in life. However, here I am, survived so far, and somewhere along the way, lived some truly beautiful days.
Do I still feel the fear of failure- absolutely I do. However, I know now that the fear of failure is temporary. As long as I keep working, I will find a way out, or make one. The only failure is giving up.
I also know that I don’t need to focus on things I suck at, like mathematics, but focus on things I am good at, like English, like comedy, like writing, like trying to make the world a happier place though talents nature has given me.
But do I still feel scared? Yes. We don’t control the outcomes because there are just too many variables involved. It’s a fear that runs through our lives.
3. The fear of losing people we love
I think all of us have this fear. We fear losing people we love, and who love us. Once my father was late from a business trip, whatever it was. I was less than 10 years’ old. I imagined all sorts of ghosts and kept waiting outside the house till he came back.
Sometimes back, I lost a close aunt to cancer. She had tended to me when I was a child. But, she died, and there is nothing we could do.
I have lost so many people I loved, during the course of life so far, and I know it’s going to happen again and again. But that doesn’t take away the fear. It’s a fear that runs through our lives.
4. The fear of lizards
This one may sound a little lame in the larger scheme of things, as a fear but then it hasn’t gone away. My mother and my aunts would tell weird stories of how vindictive lizards are. They look horrible to start with, and it is perfectly legitimate to be scared of them.
I don’t know how common they are in other parts of the world, but they are common in the North of India, where I have spent most of my lives. Sometimes, now that I am an adult male now, I am tasked with throwing them off the walls and out of the house. I do that, but I am still shit scared of them. My kidneys could pop out if one starts running towards me. It’s a fear that runs through our lives.
5. The fear of being left alone in the world- fears through our lives
As a child, I was quite lonely and diffident. I had no confidence. Although I had my parents and sister, I spent a lot of time alone, and didn’t really write out or share my fears. However, adult life is quite hard. When times get hard, most people leave you alone. Sometimes, I still have this fear, that one day, what if everyone around me leaves me along, leaving me all alone in the world, to deal with everything.
It is quite far-fetched, but it’s a fear that runs through our lives.
6. The fear of being bullied- common fears in life
Now, like I had mentioned, I was short and shy as a child, and that led to the bullying I faced at the hands of not so refined classmates. Thankfully, the world now is a better place than what it was when I was a child, but bullying still exists, and students around the world continue to face it.
It happens in jobs too, when people who are in a position of authority misuse their authority to bully or manipulate their subordinates. The only way to deal with bullying is to confront it, or get out of the situation, be it as a child, or as an adult.
7. The fear of being rejected- fears through our lives
Oh, the fear of rejection is one of the greatest fears of human lives. We have all struggled with it and it continues to affect our lives. I lost a lot of opportunities because of low confidence as a child, and even as an adult.
I got rejected for jobs, by girls I wanted to date, by employers, by mass comedy audiences. At the point of writing this, I am going through another severe rejection.
The fear of rejection is a real fear and affects our lives negatively. The only way to deal with it, is to keep going till you get a yes. We may need to alter our strategy to get a yes, but we need to keep going. The only way to deal with rejection, is to realize that what is meant for us, will come to us.
8. The fear of getting hurt- biggest fears in life
We are not talking about physical hurt here, because physical hurt heals. We are talking of emotional wounds. When people hurt us through their actions or words emotionally, sometimes, those hurts never quite heal.
Emotional hurts are painful, especially when they come from people we care about. However, it is true that it would happen, since some people do not have a clean conscience and do not care about the hurt, they cause others.
That’s why we need to be extremely careful about the people we surround in our lives to avoid getting emotionally hurt, over and over again.
9. The fear of not being enough
The fear of not being enough is more of an adult life fear. There is just so much responsibility on a man that he is always struggling to meet some or the other tasks. There is family, work and if he is ever done with them, social life to tend to.
There is never enough time, and figuring out how to make money within the timeframe available only feels insurmountable. I think it is the fear of not being enough which leads to people getting depressed, after being anxious for a long time.
Sometimes, we need to tell people we care about, that they are enough to take some load off their shoulders. The fear of not being enough is a constant fear that runs through our adult lives.
10. The fear of not making enough money- fears in our lives
Listen- the presence of money may not make you supremely happy, but the absence of money will make you extremely sad. If we are not born with a silver spoon, the fear of not making enough money to meet the expenses of our lives always lingers at the back of our minds.
It is a constant fear and we all need to learn how to make and save money so the lack of it doesn’t ruin our lives.
11. The fear of losing our jobs
So many of us are dependent on our jobs for our livelihoods that the fear of losing our jobs runs chills through our spines. Thousands of people have lost jobs in the last 3-4 years in the global economy. Some people say, it’s a part of life, but it is a brutal part of adult lives.
When you lose your job, suddenly life comes to a standstill because you don’t know how to spend your time, and are scared of using your savings to meet your expenses.
It is a genuine fear, and organizations should be careful to lay workers off, and employees should be better prepared to deal with such exigencies when they happen.
12. The fear of losing your savings
Savings are precious. They are the cash in hand for a family. If you lose your savings, you wouldn’t know how to take care of basic expenses, forget growing in your life financially. It is a genuine adult life fear, and so we need to tread extremely carefully to avoid it. Keep some money for the odd balls of life, for they will come at you for sure.
13. The fear of the future- fears through our lives
We don’t know what the future will bring. The fears of the future are the fears of uncertainty and the fears of unexpected pain. That’s why it is extremely important to live in the now. The past is dead and the future is uncertain.
Give everything you have to the now. The fear of the future will keep you on your toes, so that you prep for it, and become resilient in face of future difficulties.
14. The fear of falling sick and losing our health
Health is true health, may sounds like a cliché but it is completely true. If we lose our health, it will cripple our abilities to lead a happy life, and be able to perform the physical and mental duties life demands of us.
That is why, it is so important to take care of our physical and mental health, and other areas of health as well, like spiritual and emotional health.
15. The fear of death- fears through our lives
The ultimate fear is the fear of our lives coming to an end. It is a fear that stays with us through our lives. I don’t think everyone fears death itself. At least I don’t. I don’t think I am afraid of death. What I am really afraid of is dying before my dreams and goals have been completed.
I want to die when I am enough and done. That’s when dying would be cool. However, dying prematurely is what probably bothers us the most. We don’t want to die leaving our families or people dependent on us in disarray. It is a genuine fear because is death is certain, for all of us, and it will come knocking at some point.
I had recently written about dealing with anxiety, and I am not surprised that so many people deal with anxiety considering so many fears envelope our lives every day.
What are we really scared of?
All these fears are fears that we will either have to experience pain, or at worst, our lives will come to an end, which is the fear of death.
No, I don’t want to say here that life is easy and we should not be scared of all of these things. My point in writing this post was to admit that life is extremely hard, and all of the fears mentioned here are legitimate fears.
The fact that you have come so far, while dealing with all of these fears proves that you are a winner and that you can fight whatever life throws at you.
When you look at you in the mirror, look with your head high. You have had the courage of being the man or the woman who has faced life head on, taking fears in your stride.
To borrow Rocky Balboa, “that’s how winning is done.”
In Conclusion
Yes, you will have to lead life knowing that these fears are a part of our lives. Some of the fears like fear of the lizards and fear or darkness may go away or lessen as you move from childhood to adulthood, but a lot of the fears will stay with you for the whole of your lives.
The definition of courage is not the absence of fear, but proceeding in spite of it.
Well done, you.
Why do I write this blog?
The purpose of this blog is to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share the post with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.
I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.
Love,
Amarvani
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