Recently, I received a text from my son, Matthew, which almost re-stated exactly what I had been trying to communicate to a 16-year old friend about fear. Since Matthew did a much better job explaining what I’d be trying to say than I did, I thought I would pass it along…
Fear is not knowing.
It’s not knowing the outcome. Not knowing tomorrow. Basically, not knowing the future.
When you spend all your time thinking in the future, you’re no longer living in a reality that is true. It’s completely imaginary. You think this could happen or you worry that could happen. You fear what you don’t know, and since you don’t know the future, you almost inherently fear it.
Fear. It creeps in around the smallest holes, the smallest breaks in your armor, until it begins to destroy you from the inside out. Once fear envelopes you, you no longer get to know what things really feel like, or how far you can actually push yourself.
Fear feels more powerful than we could ever be and until you face that fear and find out, you’ll never know it wasn’t as big or as powerful as you thought. All it was, was a mouse in front of a flame casting a huge, scary-looking shadow that you would never be able to protect yourself from.
But that’s the thing about fear. It’s much more your own creation than it is ever any real danger.
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