Fear Is The Mind Killer

Today I would like to talk about a subject very close to my heart, fear. Since the beginning, fear and death have been mankind’s two most loyal companions. Whoever you are, wherever you go, whatever you do, you will one day die, and you will always be afraid of something. Whether you’re afraid of clowns, cucumbers, or global destabilization, you are absolutely terrified of something.

Fear is natural part of our lives, and I believe an essentially piece of what it means to be human. Fear makes us cautious, careful; fear bands us together. Without fear, true courage would be impossible, and there could never be something as noble as a “hero”. For all the boons it may grant us, however, fear is also the one and only true enemy of mankind. Fear paralyzes us, robs us of our reason, our intelligence, our will to fight, even our compassion. Fear can, and has all too often, driven humanity into meaningless destruction of itself. Everything that makes humans better than other animals, fear can remove.

For years, I have watched as fear has spread out across the land. I have sat by and witnessed silently as it has claimed the minds and the hearts of countless men and women. Fear of global warming. Fear of autism. Fear of H1N1. Fear of dangerous playgrounds. Fear of muslims. Fear of christians. Fear of homosexuality. Fear of fitness and musculature. Fear of fat. Fear of everything under the goddamn sun.

Fear has become the Ever-Tyrant, God-King of the human race.

And I stood by saying nothing, because I was one of his most loyal supporters.

I am one of the harbingers of a new generation. A generation of children who grew up in a society that allowed fear to rule them completely. Our world is not one of sticks and stones, but plastic and foam. Once upon a time there were children who were told to suck it up if they broke their arm; my generation gets the day off from school if we so much as scratch our leg. I remember in middle school it was snowing and so the administration placed guards at all the doors to keep us from going outside during lunch. Why? Because we might slip and hurt ourselves. I’ve seen parents force their kids to only ride their bike in the driveway for fear of them getting run over. Hell, Halloween is on its way out as a holiday because of fear. Parents now drive their kids around during the day to pick up candy, and even then they don’t let them eat it, lest the candy turn out to be razor blades or drugs (which has happened less than a dozen times and in each case it was the family themselves who did it). Two years ago I got a huge bowl of candy set up for Halloween at my apartment, hoping that kids would come by so I could be one of those awesome people who gave out too much candy at Halloween like when I was kid. Not one person knocked on our door that night, and that was with a family with no less than four kids right next door to me.

The real world is filled with violence, disease, and so many unknowns that our knowledge may as well be a single candle trying to light all of the universe. So how do we prepare our children for this world? Do we show them the dangers and how to deal with them? Do we teach them how to defend themselves from violence? Do we bolster their immune systems to fight diseases? Do we teach them how to walk into the darkness and not be crippled by fear?

No.

We hide the nature of the world. We teach them that violence is never the answer and can always be avoided, and only after we can no longer hide it from them. We wrap them in bubbles so that they never get sick, only to have them killed by the colds and flus. We teach them to fear the darkness and to always avoid the unknown. And so our children hide from the world.

By allowing fear to rule us, we have doomed our children to an even deeper slavery than our own. How much longer until we no longer leave our home states? How many generations until we stay in the city of our births? How many centuries until we never leave the borders of our neighborhood like our medieval ancestors?

We cannot fight fear; it is a part of us. We will always be afraid, but there is nothing wrong with that. Let that fear enter your body. Let it pass through you. Once you accept your fear, it can no longer cripple you. Your heart may race, your body may shake and sweat, but you can move. You may not be able to fight fear, but you can press on in spite of it, and that is what courage is.

Courage is not a trait, but a skill. The ability to muster one’s will and press forward through fear’s debilitating poison. All humans have the ability to do this, everyone has courage, you just have to practice it.

Roughly one year ago I couldn't even work-out because of fear of others and my own body. For nearly twenty-three years I couldn’t go somewhere I’d never been before or meet new people without someone else with me. My heart may still beat faster, and I may still sweat, but today I can go somewhere I’ve never been before, on my own, and talk to someone I’ve never even seen before without my shirt on. It’s not because my body started looking better, it’s not because I became more charismatic, and it’s certainly not because I became more adventurous. I can do these things now because I stopped letting fear rule my life. I was afraid, so I went out and challenged that fear.

Fear and Death are our two companions. They are mankind's two greatest enemies, but when you accept them, they become our two greatest allies.