DAILY PROMPT
Fearless Fantasies
How would your life be different if you were incapable of feeling fear? Would your life be better or worse than it is now?
(Thanks, Nique Lektra, for inspiring this prompt!)
Fear is not a bad thing,
Too much fear is a bad thing;
Fear of the wrong things is a bad thing.
Ultimately, our feelings should conform
To our reality:
We should fear what merits fear.
But how do we know?
You ask –
We don’t know what dangers will come,
Nor where they might come from —
True.
So we always fear the unknown,
So long as it remains
Unknown.
But knowing is a choice.
I have known fearlessness:
It’s called being drunk.
And I remember the thoughtless intimacy,
The destructiveness of self and others,
Even the car crashes.
We have some inhibitions for a reason,
Which is:
They are worth having.
I do not seek a life without fear
I seek to never fear without reason –
But, I will often fail, I fear
Hear, hear.
In the last hour or so of 2015, I talked about how much this book The Gift of Fear has helped beyond what I wrote in my eponymous post.
One of the key benefits, as someone who can suffer from anxiety, is distinguishing fear from anxiety. When I start running horrifying scenarios through my brain, I ask myself if there’s any evidence whatsoever X outcome will happen. If not? Anxiety.
(It’s thus that a copy of the book home with both friends. I buy several copies of the book at a time because, thanks to its author, I now understand the good that can come from not only embracing fear but knowing what to do with it.)
Not that it relates to this post, but your quoting Colin Hay got several of his songs stuck in my head; hence the “Earworm” post.
I grinned when I saw Colin Hay. 😀