A Working Analysis of Fear As Hindrance and Facilitator of a Successful Life

"Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once."

unknown author aka Billy Shakespeare :)

"Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?" perhaps fear??

same author, "King Lear"

"we all have wings, but some of us don't know why." Michael Hutchence

Like so many other words "fear", the word not the thing, is a catch-all for a whole host of related yet different emotions. The key in life is not to do the impossible and banish fear from one's life. This is to become less than human, an automaton, it is to swallow pills to keep away the inner doubts that fear can bring during the paralysis it can cause.The key to a happier life is to find the aspects of fear that thrill you, exhilarate you, and motivate you and to banish those aspects of fear that enervate you, paralyze you, and cause you to see life as a frozen mountain to cower before instead of a sea of wonderment to cast off into.

This will be an ongoing attempt at an anatomy of fear. Ultimately it will be unsuccessful as are all attempts to put emotions into words. But words, as I often say, are still the best and most human way we have to deal with all aspects of our lives, from the sublime to the terrible. Every word one writes is an act of creation within oneself and in one's reader. It creates thousands of different thoughts and emotions in yourself and the reader. So combat fear, in the first instance, through acts of creation. Initially let words be your theorem, your poem, your sculpture, or your skyscraper. To not make the attempt simply because it will fail is perhaps my first example of a negative aspect of fear; its power to enervate. To combat that one must learn to love failure, to look at it from the outside in, to learn from it.