We have finally learned, at far too great a cost, that if, the most powerful weapons ever created are unleashed, they would be fired not in anger, but in Fear.
- From the movie “Sum of all Fears”
- From the movie “Sum of all Fears”
Have you ever realized what you fear the most? Imagine standing on the top of a mountain, where you see nothing but the contours of clouds above, away from the shackles of daily lives where its only you, the beauty, the adventure and the nature; and think about all the things you fear in life, you leave behind, what exactly do you come up with, God; the unknown, fire, water, the heights, time or yourself…… what??
Mom and dad had come to the station to drop me, though I am old enough now. The minor instructions feel like a child’s play, but still she gave them, after all she’s a mother. In the train, the upper berth, all are silent, their eyes closed yet in their senses they feel someone unknown around. A small glimpse and a decision made, some check their belongings while others check the stranger, the clothes, and then the outlook and again a decision is made. Each one through his own perception builds an image and then closes his eyes; they sleep with keeping the senses of touch and sound at caution, yet after some time they doze off not realizing that their belongings may be as vulnerable as their own lives. All they see is the outside of a stranger and everyone fears what might be going inside his head, each one fears the unknown.
When travelling for the first time, mom gave at least a dozen of instructions surrounding the word “stranger”, but was it the stranger who caused all the trouble of giving and taking instructions? I thought again, it was the Fear!
When am I scared the most, when I invest in fear, fear of losing money, losing job, losing kids, losing life, fear of just losing and fear of what I have created for myself- my boundaries, the comfort zones.
When I don’t feel like talking to anybody I give in to my headphones and mp3 player not to be disturbed in my own world, like a peace treaty with someone unknown, somewhere close to me;”You don’t inflict my space and I wont inflict yours” and the days when I don’t have it, I choose to look outside the window and think about life and its colors, again playing safe and listening to myself not knowing what the stranger might have in his kitty.
When I don’t feel like talking to anybody I give in to my headphones and mp3 player not to be disturbed in my own world, like a peace treaty with someone unknown, somewhere close to me;”You don’t inflict my space and I wont inflict yours” and the days when I don’t have it, I choose to look outside the window and think about life and its colors, again playing safe and listening to myself not knowing what the stranger might have in his kitty.
What exactly am I doing?
In the pursuit of overcoming one big fear I give rise to so many other fears!
I travel and I travel for a purpose, some reason some fear , if I don’t travel I might loose something, the reasons may be many, in the journey I keep myself to the boundaries I created or which my elders created for me.
All the time when I am alone in that boundary it’s safe, but as soon as someone tries to come close, inflicts my area and the antennas get alert, caution prevails in the mind and I concentrate hard not to scare myself.
Being bold and putting up a good face are all on the surface, whereas the truth being that the insides of me shake as much as the insides of the other person. The mind decides the perception of the stranger or may be sometimes when it is not able to; Fear and my natural instinct of protectiveness also rises and all through the journey, I travel in the same two emotions, “fear and caution”; from whom? “My own kind”.
Its like being in the jungle. As soon as some animal comes into your territory, you become cautious and given a chance you go for a kill, else the animal might kill you, it’s the rule of the jungle and we are living in a jungle where we are the animals or as we always say we have made ourselves one.
Can some one point out a difference?
Do I have wrong intentions when I enter someone’s comfort zone? Why are they afraid of me? Coz they can’t read what is there in my mind, what I can do and what I won’t do, do they fear me or they fear the unknown or may be the loss of their own existence….
Is this about humanity, the human nature or the human mind? Is it about respect of our own entities or the respect of our own fears or as most of believe, respect for ourselves? Is it us who has created a world where one thing which we fear the most is our existence amongst species like us or is it the respect of the fear that insecure the being of human beings. ”If I don’t get this he’ll get it, so I try hard to avoid the fear, the fear of defeat. It has to be me first and then him”, that’s us in the real world, where sometimes it’s the stranger travelling in the train and sometimes it is someone known to me, close to me who creates the fear in its various forms sometimes mutual and mostly individual and makes me take my decisions and direct my actions, and determining the place where I would stand in the end, It ain't the bold decisions, it is the decisions bolder than the Fears that determine the destiny and the paths we choose. Where we land up in life is only a consequence of the fears which we always try to overcome sometimes intentionally and sometimes in the subconscious minds.
Who am I?
I am you, each one of you, who in the bottom of their hearts have some fear, fear that we dread the most yet we think of the external factors which might scare us. Here I am not glorifying fear, I am just trying to tell myself that today if I stop writing in this space there will be some one who would take my place, who might prove to be better than me and I shall loose the space given to me to express myself to the little world of ours, if I don’t write this today, tomorrow I might loose it and the whole jungle of words I create, would never exist and no one shall give it a thought. I fight for my space, for the fact that my existence is known to the world through this. I, who is no one but you, all of you, fight to seize my fears of being lost, of being hurt by a stranger in the train, of being out of the race of achievements, of being looked down upon by my own fellow beings. I am not glorifying fear; I am just accepting that my deeds are a consequence of my fears, still on the last pages of my life I would not wish to write that the whole book was the victim of my fears.
Food for thought:
A man, who is free, is the one who is free from all fears.
- “V for Vendetta”
