"You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith."
First, in your own words, interpret that quote from Mary Manin Morrissey.
At this point in your life, what is your biggest fear? Has it always been the same?
What did you fear the most when you were little? How did you overcome it? Why do you think you are afraid of whatever you are afraid of--both now and when you were young?
How often do you stop yourself from doing something because of fear? Do you ever regret not doing what you wanted to do?
When, if ever, is fear a good thing to feel? Why?
(450 words/65pts)
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117 comments:
i didn't even read it but i wanted first non legit comment
For some reason I really wanted to write today.
I now am using this quote to guide me in life. Well when you let fear keep you from doing something that you love you let your fear take over. Faith is to believe and to do anything you have to believe in yourself. With fear you no longer believe in yourself and decide that whatever you fear is bigger and better than you. By using faith you believe in yourself, your cause, and that you can overcome the elements of fear. When you truly fear something it takes the life out of you, and isn’t the biggest part of life dreaming? We should not let fear keep us, we should let faith lead the way instead. Because a heart filled with faith is capable of dreaming, while a heart filled with fear can only dream within limits. And a dream isn’t really a dream if you put limits on it.
My biggest fear in life right now is to be rejected. This has always been a fear of mine but ever since I reached high school it’s made its way up to my number one fear. I’m afraid of being rejected by my peers, my teachers, my parents, by people who I care about. It’s something that looms over me all of the time. I hate how much it stops me from living and dreaming, but it does.
When I was little I was scared of being separated from my parents. I used to hate when they would go on vacation and leave me. I would cry on grandma’s steps basically until they got back or it got too cold. It took me a while to overcome this, but soon they were leaving me home alone more often. Then going away more often too, thus they were gone more and I learned how to be more independent Them leaving me more often meant that I could do more things on my own, and I realized that I was a lot stronger and self sufficient than I had thought. I counted myself out before I had ever tried to gain, which is a constant problem in my life.
I was very dependent on my parents growing up. I was the only child and counted on them for everything. When your parents teach you to tie your shoe, and the ride your bike you start to look up to them. You realize they know more than you ever could, and that’s when I started to use mine as a crutch. I thought that because they knew more than me I needed them there to make all my decisions. My entire first grade year was spent in the nurse’s office or home, because I thought I would do something wrong if they weren’t there. I feared that if I didn’t have their input in most of my decisions that I couldn’t do anything right. It was scary, the whole making choices on your own thing, and I thought I needed them. I was scared to let them go.
Now I’m scared because I’ve realized that I really know how to mess things up, you can ask a few people. Someone for the past two years has told me it’s my entire fault, he jokes about it says the sinking of the titanic, my fault. Needless to say he dislikes me. That feeling is the worst feeling in the entire world. Having someone you care so much about tell you something like that is the worst feeling ever. Each time this happens I die a little inside, and fear that if I do something wrong that everyone will start agreeing. Being rejected is that feeling all over again. I don’t handle that feeling very well. I know being rejected is a part of life, but it still scares me. I just want to be good enough for the people around me. I have amazing friends, amazing parents, and amazing teachers. I just want to be half as amazing to them because I feel like I let them down and that to me is the worst kind of rejection. Letting someone down means you will most of the time be rejected by them. I hate letting people down, or when people aren’t happy. When they aren’t happy, I’m not happy because then I get this fear inside of my stomach that doesn’t go away no matter how hard I try. When I get rejected by someone it spirals me down, and because I know that outcome and how I will feel I get scared and start to fear the inevitable. Once again I take myself out before I have a chance to really see what’s going to happen.
I honestly stop myself form doing something every day because of fear. I know I do, I think about the outcomes of my actions and it scares the heck out me. I've wanted to do something for about three months now, and everyday life presents me with the opportunity, but I let it go. I'm so scared of being rejected that I just don't do it. Everyone I've talked to about it says I should go for it, but that nauseating feeling in my stomach sets in. It makes me think of what this person would say or do if I did it and then I scare myself out of it. I’m so afraid of what he’ll think if I tell him how I feel. If I tell him, he might not feel the same way back. If I don’t tell him we go on in this hated bliss of not knowing. I hate not knowing, but at the same time its bliss because he can’t exactly reject me. All day I regret not doing what I want to do with this person. It’s the last thing I think about before I go to bed, and the first thing I think about when I wake up. I see everyone becoming happy around me and I’m standing still in this wishy-washy mood that I know how to fix but I don’t have the guts. That’s actually not even the half of it. Because then throughout the day I say things because I’m afraid of what people will think if I don’t. I am constantly checking myself to make sure I’m ok, and that rejection is off my radar. It’s sickening in the worst way, that feeling in my stomach will never go away as long as I let fear control me. It such a shame that it’s such a silly fear, but it’s something I constantly struggle to get over.
I do think fear can be a wonderful thing, although I hate the fear that consumes me. Fear is what keeps people from killing anyone they feel like, and it keeps people out of harm’s way. We have rules so people will fear the consequence. Isn’t it ironic that the consequences are the very things that make me hate fear and at the same time love it? The consequences are there so people will fear the worst. If you kill someone, you might be killed yourself. That is fear at its finest. We built a country on fear, we go into war because of fear, and we make important choices based on fear. These choices, our country, and sometimes war are all good things. (What I mean by war being a good thing is that a threat is resolved, not that all wars are good.) This leads me to believe that fear is sometime healthy, and something that keeps everyone in line. This fear is a good fear, and something that I am thankful is in our society. Fear is like a sword, in one slice its protection, but look at its other side and you’ll see it kills dreams and important things like that.
I have a love/ hate relationship with fear.
this is my favorite blog so far
I can't wait! Yet another blog to which I can give an extremely long-winded and boring answer! Yes!
The quote states that you lose your ability to try for a goal when you fear the consequences of failure more than you trust your ability not to fail.
Fear keeps you alive. If you faced all danger without fear, you’d be dead within the month. Fear is the little voice that tells you not to jump out of a moving car and reminds you that you can’t fly when confronted with a sharp drop. It’s the people without fear that win Darwin Awards.
My greatest fear now is that of being lost, geographically or socially. If I can find my way, I’m fine. If I don’t know where I am or where I stand, I panic. There’s no way for me to take control. You might not guess that I’m a control freak (since my binders are in a state of rebellion, and my room resembles a battlefield). But if the situation is out of my hands (if, for example, I’m in a large and noisy crowd) I want to stand in a corner with my eyes shut until everything resolves itself. And that’s why I hate real fights (not intellectual ones). There’s too much emotion at once, and no one can tell where it’s going.
When I was little, I didn’t fear any one thing, though I was often afraid. I remember waking up in the middle of the night once, trying to leave my room, and not being able to find the handle to the door. I was terrified; I thought for sure that I was trapped. But that fear vanished with the morning. Maybe it’s because I’ve always reacted to circumstances instead of anticipating them. Monsters were things of wonder for me, not horror. I don’t know why. I often wished I could see one. But they never came, however much I wished.
How often do I stop myself from doing things because of fear? Not too often. It was usually my mother who did that. She was fearful, as are most of the women in my family. It makes me worry; they were all adventurous in their younger days. My mother hitchhiked for a few years before going to college, and traveled (not at the same time) to South America. My aunt Nancy was convinced she would be a famous journalist. My grandmother joined the Navy after high school, and her mother almost disowned her for it. Yet in age these women all turned timid, unwilling to risk anything for their own betterment.
I do not stop myself often. Only in a few circumstances. And then I cursed myself for a fool afterwards. What did I think was going to happen? And now the chance is gone forever! The feeling of loss is usually enough convince me to take the chance I am given. I have let too many go by.
So yes, I regret my missed chances. But not for long. What’s the point on dwelling on them? The time is past, and I cannot regain it by making myself miserable. I know that I will make a hundred more such stupid mistakes in my lifetime. But maybe I will make fewer for knowing that nerve-numbing shock, that strange chill that makes me shake my head mutely when offered the chance of a lifetime, and knowing a single word of reason can break the spell.
"You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith."
Simply put, you let your fear restrain your capabilities. You let it dictate whether or not you will try for what you actually want to do. Fear is inevitable, but it should not be thought of as something to prevent you from trying. Instead, it should be looked at as a challenge. Something to prove to yourself, and every one around you, that you won’t let anything prevent you from doing what you want to.
Obviously that’s easier said than done.
Right now, I have many fears. Many, many fears. But most of them exist because of a main one, my fear of “love”. How cliché, right? I say that I don’t believe that it’s meant for me and that I’m not worthy of it. But those beliefs are just excuses to hide from my actual fear. I don’t let people get close to me. I don’t let them know who I really am. This fear of love doesn’t just pertain to relationships with guys, but to my family and friends as well. One of the fears that result from this is to be let down and to let others down. It makes it a thousand times harder when you truly care about—when you love—that person. If I don’t love them, and if they don’t love me, then it’s so much easier for me not to care. Loving someone means that I need to be able to open up to them. I’m not capable of doing that. I just don’t think they’d understand, or they just wouldn’t care. I’m not willing to put my trust into others’ hands. Loving someone involves mutual trust. I don’t trust other people easily, so I don’t expect others to trust me. Thus, I’m not competent for any sort of relationship. I’m afraid of falling in love with someone who doesn’t feel the same for me. This has lowered my standards greatly. At the same time, I’m afraid of others falling in love with me, and I don’t feel the same way. Awkward much? (Awkwardness is one of my biggest fears, but I don’t know if that really concerns my fear of love.) Love entails dependability. I hate, hate, hate relying on others. I want to be my own person, but love would require allowing other people into my life. I don’t want anyone in my life but me. No one else needs to know what I go through, no one else needs to think they need to help me, no one else needs to “suffer with me”. In a way, I fear happiness. I always tell myself that’s what I want out of life, to be truly happy. But if being in love would bring me happiness, I don’t want that. I want to work for it, not be given it.
When I was younger, I feared a lot of things as well. I definitely feared having no friends. I remember every year as a kid, the night before my birthday I would cry in bed. I would think, “No one’s going to come to my birthday party. No one’s going to remember. I’m going to be so embarrassed.” Every year, probably up until 5th grade. I didn’t so much grow out of it, but I know now that the only friends I need are the ones that show they care. If that may just be my two best friends, then that’s all I need. If none of them actually care, then so be it. I also feared death. I also remember times I’d just lay in bed thinking that once I die, I won’t be anywhere. My mind won’t think anymore. I’ll be gone. Nothing left of me. In the ground, decaying. But the world will continue without me. Everything I’ve ever done in my life won’t matter because any one who was ever there to witness it would soon be gone, too. I’d cry, a lot, because I didn’t want to believe that. I went to CCD (some stupid Catholic religion thing) from kindergarten-8th grade, and I hated it. I didn’t believe in heaven. I didn’t believe in God. To get over that, I started making up my own beliefs of what will become of me. I like to say I believe in reincarnation. But I make up my own “rules” for this belief. I think this really started after I watched the movie “Fluke” (if you’ve never seen it WATCH IT, saddest movie ever… maybe only because there are 549837598 adorable puppies in it). But to this day, when I lay and think, which I do often, the topic of death will come up, and sometimes I do still get upset about it, but that’s life. Wow, I sound like a baby, crying over everything, but whatever.
I think our fears come about because of lack of experience and knowledge. When I was a kid, I thought being “popular” and having tons of friends was important. But I know better than that now. And death is a sensitive subject no matter what, but for a child thinking about that it’s quite confusing. So right now I’m a teenager, and dating is “important” (but not). I haven’t had a boyfriend since 6th grade, and I’m perfectly fine with that. I’d rather wait to find the “right” person. But each time I think I like someone, I end up not liking them in fear of them actually being the right person. I think to overcome this I have to gain “experience”. I have to make an attempt to date people, so I know what love is and what isn’t. But that of course is easier said than done, as well =].
That leads me into how often my fear prevents me from a lot of things. My fear of love prevents me from having a strong relationship with my family. I push myself away from my dad and younger sister especially. They disgust me. My mom kind of forced her love upon me, but I just find it awkward. And my older sister and I get along well enough that I can say I like her best, but I don’t love her. No one in my family knows who I am. I have a general idea of who they are, and I hate them already (well, hate’s a strong word. I strongly dislike who they really are). My fear of love also prevents me from ever trying to be in a relationship with someone. I lose interest fairly quickly, and I obsess over everyone’s flaws, but I have flaws of my own, so I’ve taught myself to try and get over others’. But I don’t make much of an attempt to date people. If I like someone, they never like me. Even if they do like me, they don’t because they don’t know me. And if they ever were to know me, then they really wouldn’t like me, so it’s better off if I don’t get involved. I’m also afraid that someone will make me happy, and that I’ll have to open up to them. Love requires trust and honesty, and I’m not too willing to give that up. So, I just don’t date people. And I’ll say this until I (or if I ever) do get a boyfriend, and depending on how that works out, I’ll determine whether or not I’m capable of falling in love.
I don’t normally regret not giving people a chance. I usually get to know the person more after I stop liking them, and really figure out that I wouldn’t have liked that person much anyway. I’m better off just being friends with most people. Besides, most people I like aren’t exactly who I want to like. I don’t like extremely attractive guys anymore, because I know that I’ll like them so much more than they would like me. I’ve learned to take into consideration more of their personalities. If they happen to be good looking AND have a good personality, then that’s two positives. Which make a negative, obviously. So I wouldn’t go for it. I don’t regret that, either. But to me, there’s a difference between “good looking” and “cute”, which both has a positive connotation, but one just means what certain people would call “hot” and what people would call “adorable”. I guess. I can handle cute and a good personality. But even though I like people, I still don’t make much effort to see if they like me. Love isn’t something I throw around, and I’m glad that I haven’t experienced, or thought I’ve experienced, it yet. But if I end up living my life never experiencing it because I never gave it a shot, I might regret that.
Just for the record, I think love is the ridiculously cliché. I don’t like sappy love movies, stories, or books. I don’t think love is realistic. I think if you’re in love, you just don’t know your partner well enough. I don’t know if that’s my fear of love talking, or my actual thoughts though.
Fear is always a good thing to feel because without it your accomplishments don’t mean much of anything.
"Sometimes, I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I can't help but ask myself how much I let the fear
Take the wheel and steer
It's driven me before
And it seems to have a vague, haunting mass appeal
But lately I'm beginning to find that I
Should be the one behind the wheel
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
I'll be there"
- "Drive" Incubus
This is the blog quote in the Words of Incubus, but not in my own (I love this song though).
Me personally, I think the quote pretty much means that you can't allow fear to control your decisions in life (which is basically what Incubus says, only they say it better... whatever, it's what I think, okay?)
Well, lets see, I fear a lot of things. Among the more unusual, and more external, are fears of needles, latex gloves, bees, any bug with a stinger, being burned at the stake, spontaneous choreographed dance and song, people who wear too much makeup, It, those chinese dragon-kites, the possibility that I was switched at birth and any day now a family of circus performers will come along to claim me and I'll have to live in Bratislava and wear wooden shoes for the rest of my life, vegetables, and my sneaking suspicion that I'm dying from some mutant disease no ones heard of yet.
It feels nice to vent all those (real) fears of mine, but none of them is my biggest fear. My greatest fear is that I'm forgettable and invisible. I worry that I could drop of the face of the Earth, and nobody would remember me. Sure, I'd be thought about at first, but after a little, everyone would just forget about me. That is my biggest fear. It's pretty much why I act the way I do, why I talk so loud and pretty much live and die by the wisecrack. In all honesty, this isn't as big a fear for me as it used to be, since by now I'm pretty sure that even if I were never seen again after writing this blog, people will still remember me fondly as "that way over the top chick who thought she was all that and a bag of chips," to which others will respond, "Isn't she the one who fed her Lang class Wonderbread for her 16th birthday and gave MBD a knife for her birthday?" and then everyone will say, "Oh yeah, I remember her, that little weirdo!"
So, you see, I'm pretty much unforgettable. But just because I'm certain my fear will never come to fruition doesn't mean that it isn't still there, niggling at the back of my mind and making snide little comments. I just ignore it, because I once heard that courage isn't the abscence of fear. It's knowing that something is more important than fear, and acting.
When I was little, my biggest fear was shots, and the fear of shots and needles is still a huge issue for me. I always cry my eyes out when confronted with any needle-like things. Lets go through a quick summary of Sarah's incapacitating fear. The first time I remember getting a shot I was about four years old, and I started sobbing my eyes out before the doctor was anywhere near me. I cried so loudly in that fish-wallpapered room that, according to my mom in the waiting room, other kids heard me and looked alarmed. The doctor tried to soothe me with promises of stickers and lollipops, but to no avail. He called my parents in to come hold my arm still. He prepped the needle and said to me, it what he obviously thought was a calming voice, "Look at the pretty fishies on the wall Sarah. How many fish are there? Look at the fishies."
"No," I cried, my voice breaking with the effort of communicating through my tears, "You're going to give me the shot!"
Realizing that any attempts to calm me were doomed to fail, the doctor quickly administered the shot, and gave me a sticker and a lollipop, even though I hadn't been a good little patient.
Next we approach my ear piercing in third grade. When the needle gun things went through my poor little ears, I let out an equally piercing shriek that left the mallgoers scared and confused. And when I say I shreiked, I don't mean yelled or whimpered. You know that decible-breaking, high pitched wordless death-screech that victims in horror movies prefer? If you multiply that by ten, and then amp up the pure pain and horror and intensity a little more, you'll have a rough idea of the way I screamed when I got my ears pierced. After that, I cried for several hours.
Even now, I still sob whenever I go to the doctors office and they tell me I'm due for a shot. I try to talk the nurses and doctor out of it every time, but to be honest I'm not sure how much of my desperate pleas are actually coherent. And if you want to talk embarrassing, lets reflect for a minute on a seemingly mature 16 year old girl crying hysterically in the doctors office at the mere mention of shots. The nurse felt so bad for me, she gave me a lollipop, which just goes to show you, that no matter how much you grow as a person, or how old you become, some things never change.
But I think I've exhausted the subject of the pure evil of needles, so let me get back to the actual blog question.
I try to never not do something because I'm afraid. The only thing I haven't done because I was afraid was take those Vagisil shots. All the girls no what I'm talking about, those (maybe) cancer preventative shots they keep trying to get me to take every time I go to the doctors? And I'm sure I'll be sorry I didn't take those shots if I wind up with ovarian cancer, but for now I regret nothing! (Dear God, how I loathe needles.) I actually don't regret a single decision I've made in life, except the one where I decided to take Honors Chemistry this year, and that decision wasn't based on fear, and I'm working on remedying my mistake. And when I really want to do something, generally I just do it, and dismiss my fear, which isn't always best.
There is such a thing as healthy fear. This fear is good, and should be listened to say, when you're six years old and want to see if you can fly and decide to test this by jumping off the top of a bunk bed. Or when you think about signing up for Honors Chemistry, and you're afraid that the workload might be too much, but you take the class anyway. See, in these situations, if The Hypothetical Person Who Is So Not Me, listened to her healthy fear, she would have been much better off.
It is the fear of failing that overpowers the faith of achieving. In other words, it’s hard to achieve your dream, when you’re too scared to go after it. When you let your fear get the best of you, you let your faith take a back seat because instead of saying “I can,” you’re saying, “I can’t.” In life, there will always be people telling you, you can’t. And, deep down, you might be telling yourself the same thing. It is this lack of faith that stops you from reaching your goal. Because without faith, you have no hope and without hope, you have no will to succeed.
My biggest fear at this point in time is being alone, being rejected. I’m scared of having everyone who ever meant anything to me… leave. I know. Out of all the things I could possibly be afraid of, I fear rejection. But there’s so much more to that word for me than it seems. For certain parts of my life, I felt really alone like I didn’t have anyone to really count on. And the thought of going through life feeling that way, feeling rejection, is scary. Not only that, I fear of getting rejected because I’m not enough. I’m scared that I’m not going to be pretty enough, or smart enough, or funny enough, or athletic enough. I don’t want to be a disappointment. What scares me the most about rejection are the feelings that come along with it.
This fear hasn’t always been the same for me. I don’t think. I realized this was my biggest fear in the last couple of years. After a while, it felt like the amount of friends I had were diminishing more and more for whatever reason. Some moved away. Some I lost touch with. Some were just not loyal. For a while, I counted on one person. It’s kind of ironic because I actually told this person my greatest fear, which indeed was being alone. In the end, they ended up hurting me. They ended up “leaving” making me feel like I wasn’t enough. From that point, I knew rejection was my greatest fear because I never wanted to feel that sadness ever again. (I know I sound ridiculously emo right now, but oh well.)
When I was little, my biggest fear was dying and not just me dying. I was scared of my family dying too. As a kid, death was a scary thought. I used to see in movies and television shows how painful death looks. I didn’t want to go through that torture nor did I want my family to go through it either. Plus, I was always scared of losing my parents. As kids, we become very attached to our parents during the early years. I hated the thought of having them leave. I think I overcame this fear through my religion. As I started to learn a little more about my religion, I learned that when a person died, they would be sent to heaven. This meant that my parents were with God and could still look over me. But eventually as I grew up and matured, I realized death was just a part of life. Everyone has to die. Even me.
As terrible as it may sound, I stop myself a lot from doing something because of fear. I don’t really take many chances because I’m always afraid of the consequences. I also don’t always do what I want to do or say what I want to say because I’m scared of the opinions of the people around me. I’m scared of they will react and how they will treat me. This isn’t a good thing. I find that the more that I stop myself from doing something or saying something, the more I am left with regrets. I usually end up kicking myself because at that point, all that I’m left with is some “shoulda, coulda, woulda’s.”
However, even though fear usually has a bad connotation, it can actually be very helpful to feel at times. Fear can help a person distinguish between wrong and right. Fear is what stops us from doing the wrong and hurting ourselves. This leads me to the fact that fear is a basic instinct. Fear is what keeps us out of dangerous situations. For example, what keeps us from walking down a dark alley in the middle of Camden at midnight? Fear. It’s quite inescapable. But fear doesn’t always deal with dangerous situations. It can bring an excitement and a sense of accomplishment. Let’s say you have a fear of stage freight, but then you perform in front of huge crowd during Cabaret Night. After everything is done and sung, you were able to overcome your fear and finally feel liberated.
Fear. It’s a tricky little bugger.
"No matter what we say our religion is
whether it's Islam, Christianity
Juddaism, Buddha-ism, Old School-ism or New School-ism
If we're not schooling the youth WITH wisdom
then the sins of the father will visit the children"
The fear Ms. Morrissey is referring to is a fear of failure, and she's weighing it against faith in your own success. She's not really saying anything mind-blowing. All her litle quote means is that we as humans give up on our goals when we spend our time concentrating on the failure rather than the success.
I've actually been having long long talks with my guidance counselors about this very subject. We analyze how much (and believe me it's a lot) my goals have changed since freshman year, and why. Right now, my biggest fear is the future. That's pretty much always been one of my top fears. To put it in perspective, I started studying for the SAT's in 4th grade because I was afraid I wouldn't get into college if I didn't get a 1600. (Don't worry, I grew tired of all that vocab by the end of 6th) Of course, that was an irrational thought, but most of my thoughts are. I'm never afraid of the short term future. In fact, I tend to be completely stress free when it comes to the stuff at hand. Right now I'm totally buggin out about all the scholarships I'm going to lose if I can't bring my calc grade back up. That's right, ladies and gents, I already have scholarships planned out, haha. Most of them involve getting a 1400 on the SAT's (I'm a tiny bit below that right now) and staying in the top 5% of my class.
I'm not sure you really want to know what my biggest fear was when I was little, but I'll tell you anyway. I was afraid of getting raped. Whenever I’d ask someone what they feared, and they’d say “Nothing!” I’d just tell them mine, and they’d reconsider. Honestly, who wasn’t afraid of it after they’d put some thought into it? Is there even a way to overcome logical fears? I think there’s a big difference between a fear and a phobia. Fears are necessary parts of the endocrine system that act as triggers for the adrenal medulla to release adrenaline, setting off the Fight-or-Flight response, etc. Phobias are unexplainable fears that hinder your ability to live your life. It’s the phobias that we must overcome, not the fears. If you believe you have a fear that isn’t helping you, then it’s not the fear’s fault, but your own. The way to “overcome” a fear is not to get rid of it, but to use it to your advantage.
Fears will cause anxiety. That can be beneficial or detrimental depending on how you deal with it. If you control it you can use it as a motivator, and you can increase efficiency; all is well. On the other hand, letting that anxiety consume you will only result in failures.
I try to live a life free of regrets, but of course, there are some exceptions, and pretty much all of them involve my recent losing streak with girls (I’m going on something like ten failures in a row). Oftentimes I’ll be flirting with some random girl, but fear of rejection prevents me from getting her number. Oh, and I’m afraid to actually commit to anything. I’ll take girls on dates, but never ask them out. I can never focus on one girl at a time for fear of failing and ending up alone. That’s actually a logical technique for me, since girls tend to lose interest in me just as quickly as they gain it. So yea, I’m probably gonna be single for a looong time, just like Jen up there.
“Fear not the embarrassment of failure,
but the consequences of maintained quiescence.” – Jon Scheaffer
Jen:
Speaking of Jen….sounds like you’ve got yourself in quite a predicament. It would seem to me that you may just have to throw caution to the winds and try out a relationship. Sure, you could get hurt, or you could hurt the guy, but that’s life. It’s necessary to go through a few high school relationships so you can get experience for when you go to college and beyond (just like Buzz Lightyear). Just remember that all high school relationships are transitory. They’re meant to prepare you for the future. Likewise, you don’t have to wait around for the perfect guy to come around, nor should you expect to find one in high school.
"Sunken-eyed girl in the sandwich shop
Ladle my soup from the kettle pot, so
Swoony my self with the smolder looks
Parsing that gaze for the right intention"
So JEN! Basically, I could quote your entire blog because I agree with just about everything you said.
"I lose interest fairly quickly, and I obsess over everyone’s flaws, but I have flaws of my own, so I’ve taught myself to try and get over others’"
^Yea, same with me, I can't stick with one thing for a long time. That's why I play so many sports and activities, I can't keep my interest with one thing. When you were talking about 'love,' I thought about my feelings towards it. Although I loose interest and whatnot, I make myself believe that the person I fall in love with will never loose my interest, and therefore I wait until I'm sure that it's 'love.'
"I’m afraid of others falling in love with me, and I don’t feel the same way. Awkward much? (Awkwardness is one of my biggest fears, but I don’t know if that really concerns my fear of love.) "
^Ha, I thought this was pretty funny, and a secret fear of everyone. Although it's emotionally damaging to be in love with someone who doesn't love you back, being on the other side of the situation must be totally awkward. Basically the definition of an AWKWARD TURTLE! Which for many of us, seems to define our teenage lives.
A lot of your blog was about the ridiculous feeling called 'love.' For me, I think that word has such a negative connotation, that I have found myself not believing in it. Love can bring depression and anger, if you loose someone you really care about. Like you said, it's easier not declaring your love for someone family or not, to keep yourself from falling into depression if anything were to happen to them.
"I was afraid of getting raped. Whenever I’d ask someone what they feared, and they’d say “Nothing!” I’d just tell them mine, and they’d reconsider. Honestly, who wasn’t afraid of it after they’d put some thought into it? Is there even a way to overcome logical fears? I think there’s a big difference between a fear and a phobia. Fears are necessary parts of the endocrine system that act as triggers for the adrenal medulla to release adrenaline, setting off the Fight-or-Flight response, etc. Phobias are unexplainable fears that hinder your ability to live your life."-Jon Scheaffer
Well, I too was thinking the exact same thing. I have a TON of fears, but I also have many phobias. My problem is I can't tell the difference between them. I'm afraid of small heights, deep waters, the things that live in deep waters, drowning, cancer, AIDS, pretty much any deadly diseases, being touched, being tickled to death (YES I BELIEVE THAT CAN HAPPEN), sex, awkwardness, being handicapped/crippled/having a part of my body amputated, losing any of my senses, emotions, lack of emotions, the dark, growing up, and insanity. See, these are a lot of "fears", but I just don't know if I can call them fears because some of them I've never even encountered, so how would I know if I actually fear them?
Like Scheaffer, not just when I was younger did I think EVERYONE was a rapist, I still do. Now, my family is screwed up to put it lightly. My grandfather, who I've never met because he died in a car accident with another woman, molested my two aunts (his daughters). My aunts' brother, my uncle, molested them as well. THEN he molested my aunt's two daughters. Now, I have never been molested, just throwing that out there for any people who were wondering. My uncle is on medication now. I'm not only afraid of him, but people in general. When you live in Mullica, where there are NO STREET LIGHTS, walking down the street in the pitch black let's your mind get the best of you. I know one of these days some man is gonna pop out of the woods and rape me. I'm obsessed with SVU (I would love to marry elliot stabler) and it has shown me pretty much every situation I could come into contact with a rapist. So as much as I'm ready for when it happens, WHO WANT'S TO GET RAPED!? not me. =]
Wow, I kind of figured that we would be covering this topic someday, but not this early in the year. I'm not 100% ready to "go deep" with my fears yet, but I'll do my best to delve as far as I find comfortable.
My biggest fear has remained the same since when I was little. Death. I know it seems a tad cliché and over done, but it is one of the only things that I find scary. It’s unknown, one of the only things in this world that is. We study it, do everything that we can to observe it, fight against it, even try to play humor to it, but it still remains my only real fear.
I’m uncomfortable with the idea that I may no longer exist when I die, that I’ll be erased from this world entirely, like I never existed in the first place. The idea of not being around, not thinking, not feeling. Nothing.
That’s all I can say for right now. I’ll do more later.
Oh, and I'm afraid of driving a motorized vehicle, mental hospitals, and the possible existence of some sort of hive mind that I'm not aware of.
And how typical would that be, for everyone but me to think as one? They probably all got together and decided that at a certain age. I can see an entire Commitee for the Hive Mind and on my thirteenth birthday they (you know who you are) meet and say "Next order of bussiness; new members. Should Sarah Crane be initiated into our giant collective conscious?" And everyone groaned and saud, "Oh god, no, then all everbody would want to do is watch Bones reruns and eat chocolate."
Those jerks.
Now, I'm going to be referring to songs a lot, so no one get offended if they don't like the music or anything, but this song reminded me of Jen's and Carly's blog:
"Facitiously fiction when Albrite was bitten
While kissing the girl of his dreams on the lips
When I was watching when I was clocking
Seconds to minutes their lips locked like digits
On safes unsafe mainly due to ticking contents
When I was watching timer tick tocking
Don't open the safe is unsafe
No you won't disarm my heart
The last gift you'll ever get from me
Is the combination or the key
No you won't disarm my heart
The dial was rusted vintagely constructed
To carry out thoughts of a small scale destruction
I saw this one coming theres no use in running
Safe in the distance ignorantly witnessing
Everyone scatter as I had a vision
A regret you might say a worry you might say
No you won't disarm my heart"
-"Unsafe Safe" The Hush Sound
That's actually the full song. Short, no?
Synecdoche was the word of the day on dictionary.com…..lol
I interpret the quote as saying, “When you don’t believe in your abilities to do great your fear of failing gets the best of you and you will never know what could have been….” Or in simpler terms “ If you don’t try because you are afraid to fall flat on your face then you will never achieve your full potential.”
My biggest fear has to be, not knowing what comes next. No I’m not afraid of what’s going to happen in the next seven seconds but in general in TERRIFIED of the distant future. I don’t know what I’m going to major in college, heck I don’t know what colleges I’m even applying to. I have no clue as to if who I am now is the person I want to be for the rest of my life but seriously no one knows this and it just creeps me out that I don’t know most of the answers about life that I thought I should know by now. I didn’t expect that that I would be a super genius but seriously come on I want to know what the meaning of life!! Now I sound like I whinny child. Ohhh great! Okay I’m gonna stop now..
My monodest fear has practically stayed the same throughout the years except for the random fears of the big bad dark and eight-legged spiders.
Other than spiders and the dark I was scared of being abandoned. It’s pretty stupid. I was an only child until I was 1 year 6 months and 4 weeks. Oh the pain, the agony!! I just thought that everybody would get bored with me and they would only pay attention to my brother. I refused to pick him up or even acknowledge his existence. No I did not hit him like those stories that you hear about the first welcome-home-baby parties. Eventually I got over it and no it’s not happily ever after but whatever, we get along most of the time. -- And when we don’t ohhh it’s on!!!!! (sike)
Well I guess my mom helped me get over my fear by giving us, my brother and I, the same attention and making me actually interact with my brother. At least that’s what she told me. History may say differently. =/
Why was I afraid? Why was I not afraid? Ahhhh!! I think we all are afraid of the future at least a little bit. We all dream and want things to come true sometime in our lives. I guess I’m afraid that I’m not doing the things that I’m supposed to do to achieve my dreams. More than that I guess I’m not sure of my dreams. And as for my childhood fear.. I was two! What do you expect? I had a brother who everybody thought was the cutest thing alive while I was pushed aside ‘til people actually realized it bothered me…
Wow! I stop myself a couple times a day actually. I don’t want to hurt anyone but I want to be myself at the same time. I’ve been better at ignoring this fear lately but I can’t help it. I’m a weirdo tree hugger.
Regrets.. Yes I have them. I won’t say what they are but I feel like punching myself in the face afterwards. I was stupid I should have said what I felt but no the stupid conscious makes me feel like I’ll be insensitive for saying that… This is what I get for being Catholic! – Not meant to be offensive, see hear I go again…Grrrrrrrr! —
I guess fear is okay to feel sometimes because you learn to fight through the fear and live your life even though you may have obstacles. Life is tough and conquering fear teaches you conquer things that you may not think possible at the moment.
Meee Leonor, "Queso =)"
why is everybodys so long! my eyes are burning by just looking at their lengths!
kelly n.
Wait i sec ...awwwww i almost cried...
I hadn't even thought about some of the things you talked about in your blog when I wrote mine for example the fear of death which i had 4ever when I was in Middleschool
Well Said Kelly!
Leonor <3
BYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jen:
Speaking of Jen….sounds like you’ve got yourself in quite a predicament. It would seem to me that you may just have to throw caution to the winds and try out a relationship. Sure, you could get hurt, or you could hurt the guy, but that’s life. It’s necessary to go through a few high school relationships so you can get experience for when you go to college and beyond (just like Buzz Lightyear). Just remember that all high school relationships are transitory. They’re meant to prepare you for the future. Likewise, you don’t have to wait around for the perfect guy to come around, nor should you expect to find one in high school.-Scheaffer
See, that's exactly what I don't like about relationships at this point in life. Rarely do they ever last. Now, who wouldn't want to be in a relationship like Dev and Mike, where everyone just knows they'll be together for a long time, if not forever. But I think dating people when you know that they probably won't last just sounds ridiculous. Why go through such torture? Okay, I get the whole "it'll prepare you for the future", it makes sense, perfect sense. If I date now, I'll be able to gain enough experience to know just what love will actually feel like, and I won't be blinded. But I lose interest easily, and I'm not a very interesting person so I wouldn't doubt my "partner" would lose interest in me. as well. Aside from my fear of it, I haven't come to the conclusion yet if I even want to fall in love. I have plenty of time to figure that out.
Quick comment to Jen, you can actually die of laughter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_hilarity
So being tickled to death is not that far off base.
Jen:
Obviously i agree with most of what you said since i used your examples about 5 times in my own entry. The only thing i don't agree with completely is the love thing but that is your opinion and i have my own so, it really doesn't matter. But, i completely agree otherwise and think you did an excellent job.
Firstly, I think the quote says dreams are meant to be big and way out of our comfort zone, hence the reason they are called “dreams”. But I also think it is saying that no matter how impossible are dreams may seem when the time comes to chosen our path in life, we can not be afraid of failing or falling short because if we are held back by our predispositions to stray form the unknown and scary we will never know what miraculous event could have unfolded if we had just tried it instead of letting our fear dictate our actions. In the words of Brian Littrell, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” In other words, we can’t let fear rule our life or determine the paths we choose to take.
As irrational as it may sound, my biggest fear is waking up one day and finding out that everyone I know and love has died. Yeap, highly, highly, highly times ∞ unlikely, but it is my biggest fear. But I guess the deeply routed fear or fears are abandonment and possibly death, which would not surprise me at all. No, it has not always been the same. When I was little I was afraid of the dark but not in the normal sense. I was scared of being left alone to fend for myself with no friends or family there to help, the darkness of loneliness and helplessness. I was a highly dependent child always seeking approval and praise, hmmm doesn’t sound much different from now does it? My parents would go on vacation once a year for their anniversary and I dreaded that date. I feared they would leave and never come back and I would wind up living with my brother and sister and we would have to support our selves. Obviously, I was a little paranoid, oh wait, still am :) In the beginning, when I was about 7, I cried my heart out because I seriously thought that they were never coming back. Each subsequent year I became a little less crazy and eventually calmed down to the point where I was tear-free, that was about when I was 11. Still, I don’t know that I have completely overcome that paranoia consider my present day biggest fear is people dying and leaving me alone; sounds awfully familiar. But why do I have this fear? I guess the root of this fear is because of a few things. My dad’s dad left him when he was little and I never wanted that to happen to me. Also because, as mentioned in my occasional paper, I had death staring me in the face, and the thought of leaving everyone I know and loved really scared me. If you have no clue what I am talking about, here is the passage in my OP that mentions my duel with death:
“I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease a few years ago and since then I truly have learned to appreciate everything I have. I was on the verge on being placed in the hospital for months and if none of the remedies the doctors had chosen worked, death was highly likely. I tell you this not to make you feel sorry for me or anything associated with that but to show you that I have learned to look at life differently and realize all of the wonderful things I have been blessed with in this fragile life.”
I realized how delicate the line between death and life is and I fear that I will have to go through it again but on the opposite side, it sounds selfish and is but that is my fear.
I would say almost everyday fear prevents me from trying something or taking a chance with a relationship. There have been numerous times that I have had a desire to be “more than friends” with a few girls but, as Jen mentioned, I fear the consequences; whether it be rejection or a failed relationship that eventually causes me to loose a friend. I have talked to people about this and they urge me to take the risk because I will regret it otherwise, but I have yet to build up enough courage to do that. I fear people’s opinions of me, which is a characteristic I despise deeply about myself. I wish I could be a carefree, happy-go-lucky type of person who hasn’t the slightest care in the world and frankly doesn’t, pardon my French, give a damn about what others think of them. That is truly an amazing quality to possess. I have slowly pecked out of my protective shell and exposed myself to the jeers and disapproval of my peers and it is slowly becoming easier but I still have a long, arduous journey ahead of me. Just as many times as I don’t do something out of fear is the about the amount of times I regret the choice. There are many risky things, such as parasailing, I have passed up because of fear and it usually irks me by the end of the day. It happens all the time in school. I don’t run for president because I fear I’ll lose and make a fool of myself and I usually have the argument, with myself I might add, about I couldn’t possibly know that unless I tried. But logic doesn’t ever seem to work in these situations. I can only hope that I can slowly venture towards my more adventurous nature, if that exists, and learn to live life to the fullest despite the fears and reservations I have because I will never know unless I try, right?
Fear, no matter how much I bash it, is useful in maintaining order, peace, and respect. Without fear, there would literally be chaos running amuck and the whole world would flip upside down. Ok, so that’s a hyperbole but you get the point. Fear of punishment and the consequences of an action help to maintain order and peace and respect (Polysyndeton) in a society where everyone is out for the betterment of themselves and a few select others. Jen also mentioned something very wise; fear helps legitimize most of our achievements. We usually feel as though failure is evident, when we succeed the apprehensions we had before make us wallow in our glory and learn to appreciate it a little more.
This is my shortest blog ever, so all of you should read it, although it really isn’t all that special:
Words: 1083
Characters: 4670
Jen:
So as i was reading your response to jon this song was playing UB40's "i can't help falling in love":
Wise men say only fools rush in
but I can't help falling in love with you
Shall I stay would it be a sin
If I can't help falling in love with you
Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes some things are meant to be
take my hand, take my whole life too
for I can't help falling in love with you
Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes some things are meant to be
take my hand, take my whole life too
for I can't help falling in love with you
for I can't help falling in love with you
It is ironic becuase it is almost the complete opposite of how you describe your feelings. Just thought i'd share that.
I can't say how many times I sat in my seat in grade school, and read all the posters in the class rooms, rather then pay attention to the lesson on the ancient Egyptians, or the scientific method. Many of those quotes and messages have stuck with me through the years, mainly because of the sheer repetition of reading them over and over, day after day. Anyway, I distinctly remember the quote: "Never let your fears stand in the way of your dreams." I feel as though this quote and Morrissey's quote are sending very similar messages; have faith in who you are, set goals, and go for it. Never let anything stand in your way. Ever.
My biggest fear has always been the same. Loss. I'm so scared of losing things...whether it be somebody I love, my iPod, my mind, my innocence, my A in calc, I'm always thinking and worrying about loss. If you think about it, this is a very broad fear. It encompasses loved ones, materialistic objects, emotions, possessions, characteristics. Just about anything could be lost.
When I was younger, I would always pack up my toys in preparation for long car rides, vacations, or Mom-Mom's house. I usually worried that I would lose something. My biggest fear was leaving things behind- even if it was something silly like one of my favorite Barbie shoes, or my American Girl Doll's hair clip. I didn't want to forget anything. Now, even 10 years later, I worry about the same things, just on a more mature level. Unfortunately, I still haven't overcome this fear, and I don't feel as though I ever will. It's not really something I mind...
I feel as though I am so afraid of loss for a few different reasons. I have this thing where I am really sensitive to emotions. I tend to think that even inanimate objects have feelings of some sort. I had a really active imagination as a child. So this, coupled with my sensitivity really didn't help. If that makes sense? Also, I've lost a lot of people in my life. All my great grandparents, 2 of my dogs, 1 bunny, countless fish, 2 soccer coaches, and other family members/friends. So yeah, I don't really like loss.
I don't think that I stop myself from doing much because of fear...maybe fear of embarrassment I do. Who doesn't? I try my hardest not to let this get to me, although it can sometimes be quite difficult. Fear of failure stops me from doing stuff sometimes, which is very unfortunate. I do regret the moments when I allow my fears to overcome me, and I often kick myself in the butt for letting my fears hold me back. In the long run, I feel as though this is something I will be able to work through and correct. The more comfortable I become with myself, the less I will have to worry about and be afraid of.
Fear can definitely be a good thing. As Bunje says, "always go with your gut." Sometimes we subconsciously react to a situation due to an inner fear, and this can save us a lot of harm. I feel as though we know, deep down, when we are in trouble, and fear helps us take proper measures to save ourselves:
I was riding my bike around the corner one day to Maegan's and a man in a pick up truck drove by me. He was pretty creepy and it gave me a sinking feeling in my gut. Where I live, there aren't many houses or cars around...just trees and deer. So I just kept peddling, faster and faster. Before I realized what was even happening, he turned around and drove by me again. Oh god, I thought to myself. What the heck?! I picked up my phone and immediately called my mom, however she didn't answer. So, I called Maegan and made her stay on the phone with me until I reached her house. I was near tears. I have never peddled so hard, and I reached her driveway in record time. I was sweating, panting, shaking, over all scared to death. I got to her house and the man drove by her driveway just as I had pulled in. When I got inside, I called the police, and as I was looking out her window I saw him circling around the development. Totally creepy. The cops came, and everything ended okay. However, fear saved me. That adrenaline rush allowed me to reach Maegan's house just in the nick of time. I'm convinced he was after me, and I will never ride around by myself again.
Fear definitely can tear people apart when it is not reigned in, it can become a consuming, oppressive feeling. However, we have been given the emotion of fear for a reason, and I believe that it does have a positive purpose in our lives.
"My biggest fear has to be, not knowing what comes next."
-Leonor Negron
I know exactly where you're coming from girl! It's so scary to live life day by day, never knowing what to expect tomorrow. So much can change, and absolutely nothing is definite. In an instant, life can change. In the blink of an eye, life can be over. You just never know. This is a good one, I didn't really think of it, but I definitely understand what you mean.
"A dream is a dream. It can be easily blocked by what you call 'fear' and escape from your grasp if you let it. If you truly believe in your dream, you will realize something greater than anything else in your life..."
I cocked my head to the side and thought to myself with a smile. He grinned casually before continuing.
"It was never too far away. You just have to have some faith and work towards it is all."
Ah... the good old days where I was young and naive... Okay, moving on.
I think that Morrissey is basically saying that your dream can be achieved if you have the faith to back it up with. Faith is what makes up many aspects of our lives. Think about it. I mean I have faith that justice will prevail. I have faith that all my friends will have good lives. I have faith that I'm working towards a better future. Isn't faith the pushing force for my dreams? It's almost used as a shield for fear when what we want is, as we see it, unattainable. It's like the "Without light, there's no darkness. Without darkness, there's no light." discussion. Without fear, there is no faith because if there was no fear in the world, what would we need to hope for and believe in? It is the fear that makes us able to have faith. Without faith, there is no fear. If I was never scared of losing my dream, then I wouldn't believe that I can achieve it either. Without that fear implanted in my mind, I wouldn't spend my days reassuring myself that there is faith that I will do it and make myself go towards the dream. However, if the fear is bigger than the faith, the dream is blocked off as the person will not allow themselves to go towards it because they are afraid of the failure and humiliation laced with it. The other way around is the opposite. If the faith is greater than the fear, the dream is opened and the person will feel more compelled to run towards it than spend the time being afraid. Mary Manin Morrissey recognized the key factor that is the ruin of many would-be-great people: fear of failure. Great people have great dreams and it is what they do with their dreams that count, but if they are too afraid of failing, they will stand where they started off.
Erm, I think I over expanded my interpretation of the quote, but yeah...basically fear is a deciding factor as to whether the person runs toward the dream or stops and watches as it is blocked off, watches it as it sails away and forever mocks them (Does anyone know where this came from? We read it this summer!!! :]). Poor men.
Hm...what is my biggest fear right now? I guess, in this age and time, my biggest fear is making mistakes as well as not challenging myself to the full extent of my abilities. I know my capabilities and I know my limits, but I hate disappointing myself. I also hate making mistakes because people make fun of me after...ahem... I think the challenges actually came from my parents who I would really hate to disappoint, though that's rare now. I'm really happy that my parents aren't as pushy anymore, most likely because I push myself enough that they really don't need to...so yep. My biggest fear is disappointing myself and not achieving what I know I can achieve. I hate failure in anything because I know I am able to do many things correctly if I had just put in more time or something… Of course, it hasn't always been the same (though in a sense, it is the same… The fear of failure can have different sources though).
When I was little, I feared the usual things. I feared new people, new places, and new experiences. I feared losing my friends, being yelled at by my parents and getting boo-boos. I guess what I feared the most was that my parents wouldn't love me if I didn't attain the goal they had set for me. It was easy to overcome once I learned from my parents that they would love me no matter what I did and when they started to tone down on the impossibly high goals (though it really didn't matter seeing as I ended up keeping them because I really like challenges, haha). I think this would also count as fear of failure, but I’m not sure if it would be the same kind of fear seeing as the reason is a bit different…I don’t know, I feel like it’s different.
I think the reason I was afraid of disappointing my parents mostly stemmed from filial piety. Family is really important to me, even more than my friends, which shouldn't be a surprise if you have seen me gush over my sister. So cute!!! *glomps my sister from behind before being beat up* Anyways, because most of my respect was for my family (as well as adults), disappointing my parents killed me. My parents were godlike in my eyes when I was younger, so of course I feared being disapproved of. Now, I think I am afraid of what I'm afraid of because I've disappointed my parents and myself before and I really hate doing that, especially since my goals now were goals that my parents had for me back then. I feel like people are mocking me and making comments about me when I fail because that's just the way I remember being treated when I was younger in elementary school. Let's say I was on a small chair back then. Many people ended up knocking it out below my feet just for one mistake. It hurts to pick myself up over and over again, so I always fear making mistakes and failing anything.
I stop doing something many times when fear gets to me. I mean, even though I really hated myself for it, I gave up drawing about a few years ago because I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to get into college and felt that I needed to study. Of course, I have gone back to it and am now just taking it like it is. I know I can’t change that 75 on my test or that C- on that paper, so I mind as well make my next paper better or just study a little more before the tests. It’s life and I find the past a little boring… Anyways, yea, I often stop myself from doing things when the fear of failure is staring at me in the face with a huge grin on his face. *shudders* Talk about scary…
So, basically, I stop myself a lot because of fear. Hm…let’s use this. Life is like a chess game to me. I like to think out my moves carefully and sacrifice pieces accordingly. I don’t want to have my knight taken from me because I didn’t think it out. So, just like when I’m playing a serious match, I stop a lot and think out all possibilities and consequences of my next moves, which is what I do a lot in life anyways. While it sounds like I’m a wimp and I stop a lot because of fear, and the chess game may be hard, it’s something I enjoy doing and sometimes, I just have to have some faith. Life really shouldn’t be stopped by fear too many times. Where’s the sense in living if I’m always afraid of something right? So, yeah, I make mistakes, but it adds a little bit of “flava” to my life so, screw it all, I do what I want! (Ahem…I lost my train of thought…)
Hm…I think fear could be a good thing sometimes. It keeps people in line instead of allowing them to act like wild animals, foaming at the mouth as they yell at each other for what they believe to be theirs. I mean, isn’t the law based on fear? No one wants to die, so for the severe crimes, people might actually get the death penalty. This plays on the person’s fear and, hopefully, might make them think twice before doing anything criminal. So, I guess it’s good sometimes right? (Of course, I don’t believe that fear should be used to force people to work for you or anything like a dictatorship or something like that… Don’t get me wrong, I just mean that without fear, would people honestly listen to the government?)
To Jon S.:
O.o; Wow… you are definitely ahead!!! You never cease to amaze me (in the good way)! Respect to the max for Schaeffer!!! And I’m sure there is a girl that likes you and that you will be in a relationship that won’t be over after the first few dates! You have to believe!! *stars form around me* BELIEVE!!! Plus, I can understand what you mean by the fear of commitment in a relationship. It’s perfectly understandable at our age, seeing as we have yet thought of being like our own parents… I mean, I don’t think marriage has ever passed by in my thoughts, except for the times when my parents told me that relatives were marrying and stuff like that, but that doesn’t count! So, yea, I just thouthg you should know.
Plus, the fear of being raped is something that I bet a lot of girls have right now, though when you were young, it is also scary since I’m always hearing about these pedifiles and such… *shudders* Be happy, Schaeffer!! You are now a strong, sturdy man!!! You can take on anything that comes at you!!! ^_^
El Fin
P.S. Man, this blog took me more than an hour and a half to write… Darn you Bunje!!! >////< My head is in so much pain… I don’t even think what I wrote makes sense anymore. (I don’t actually mean that!)
No matter how much negative energy I try to throw at this quote, I just can't change the virtue of its meaning. Its just completely and utterly correct. Fear is probably the biggest barrier we all must face. Countless of life problems stem from the existence of fear.
Well, without anything to even build up to this, you want to know my greatest fear Mrs. Bunje? My biggest fear is "failure." You might be thinking right now, that this is stupid, but read on. This fear generates from my family's history and what has become of each of them. Starting with my Mother, she is stuck at a crappy job, oops make that two crappy jobs. She has no time for a "life." She is single and except for me she is completely alone. Her nerves are getting the best of her, and she loses her control over anger at any minor thing. My grandmother, is mainly alone, she only gets to see my mother and I every few summers. She still cries when I talk to her on the phone and everytime I plead her to stop. My father, is probably worst off. Because of a drinking problem, my mom divorced him when I was very young. He seemed ok at first, but then his condition deteriorated. Now he has gained weight, he can barely even move anymore. Apparently he also has some sort of disorder, that could force him to lose his life at any given time. My entire family depends on me to rise above them and actually do something with my life. This burden pains me, and generates my greatest fear. To elaborate further, it is the fear of disappointing the ones I love.
HaHa, I remember being afraid of all the standard things as a child. There was darkness, there were stairs and bycicles(Ill elaborate on that one), there were animals, and later on in the years, there was death. So starting with darkness, that kind of ties in with death. Mainly I was afraid of the dark because that is the perfect environment for being killed. Just out of nowhere a fat dude with an axe randomly appears and peels the flesh off my bones. The stairs and bycicles are both "OMG" moments, that I ususally joke about now. Anyways, the whole thing with the stairs is that when I was a kid and was going to school like on a regular morning, I went to walk down the stairs as I was waving bye-bye to my grandma. BAD, FREAKING IDEA. Before I knew it I plummeted 18 some, cement stairs. It did not hurt so much because my bookbag ACTUALLY blocked every fall. !!! God Exists !!! The bike story is also a popular one. I was riding backseat on a bike, and as I was enjoying the ride I just kind of forgot to pay attention as to where my legs were bouncing to and from. ANOTHER BAD FREAKING IDEA. My leg got caught in the moving bike, I fell on the ground, got dragged a bit, and ended up with a bleeding ankle. The person in the front went back to where I live to get help, but I was instead rescued by some ppl who saw me fall. I think at least one of them was a doctor cause he carries around those things you use to wrap people's injuries in. So the cleaned of the wound, wrapped, gave me a banana so that I would stop crying (Keep in mind im only like 6 or 7) and then carried me home. !!! God Exists Again!!! So yeah, pretty traumatizing experiences. One still causes me to be one of the few people who don't know how to ride bikes. There I admitted it. The last one with the animals is weird. I wasn't really afraid of animals, as from a young age I would take pictures with snakes rapped around my neck and a baby alligator or something in my left hand. No No No, I was afraid of spiders. Especially those big, fuzzy, and very weirdo colored ones that are just, GHAHHHH!!!!
Getting over these fears was one. The technique behind the darkness/death one is pretty interestng. I basically told my self, that if such a time comes, I would be able to do little to stop it. My life is the most important thing that I possess, and I woudl protect it with all my might. But whatever happened with that, would happen. Weird right? I think so. Obviously after meeting countless of stairs, I just learned to actually look where the heck Im going. The bike thing, well, its not that I never got over the fear, its just that I don't need to concern myself with it anymore. Im at that age where I can persue my goal of having a car. God Bless Four-Wheeled Vehicles!!! The last one, spiders, I still haven't gotten over. If I see a spider, I have to kill it before it kills me. I mean c'mon, these things are like the ninjas of the animal kingdom. They sneak completely annoticed, bite you with their fangs, enject poisounos venom into your bloodstream, and leave you for dead. THEM THINGS IS FREAKING SCARY. *Note: I apologize to language teachers everywhere.*
Unfortuantely, I still let fear control almost every aspect of my life. Many things that I want to do, and think I should do, I don't. At the last minute, fear just gives this godly, enligtening, universally excepted reason to just NOT DO IT. I constantly regret my constant failure at these fights against my personal fears. It pisses me off to no end and keeps me from sleeping at night. Im serious, these things happen. The worst part about this whole jumbalooted mess, is that you never know if a particular fear is good or bad, if you dont' go throught with the action. Its almost impossible to tell if fear is guiding you along the same path, or just trying to make your life crap. By not going through with whatever it is that you want, you won't ever know if you should have even went through with the action in the first place. Trust me, I know. This must be where the phrase "We learn through experience" comes from. Greeeeaat!!! That makes my life OH!!! so much easier.
But whatever, fear really can really help a person out. Taking Sarah's example, lets say you decide to learn how to fly so you jump out of a bunk bed. Lets just say for the sake of arguement, that you are hyped up on sugar, have "Spidey" powers, and just climbed up to a telephone pole (IT COULD HAPPEN). Now you are standing up there and saying to yourself, "Nope, doesn't look like Ill make it without keeping all of the blood inside of me. No thanks." There you go, fear saved you, hooray, "lashings of ginger beer for everyone." To put it simply, fear can stop a person from making a huge veriety of mistakes, but the problem with fear is that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY OF KNOWING WHAT IS A MISTAKE AND WHAT IS A LEGITIMATE OPTION. As you can tell, I am not very happy about fear. =)
P.S. Im sorry this is somewhat long, I guess I actually had a lot to say in this blog.
To Sarah Crane:
I've said this before, I will say it again, and I will probably say it AGAIN the next time I see you in gym, but "You've had quite an interesting childhood." P.S. I don't know any songs dealing with this topic. SYSTEM OF A DOWN, GUIDE MY SEARCH ENGINE !!!
To Myra:
I totally understand your fear of death, though the way you explained it, it seems like you have a much better reason for fearing than I did. All I want to say is read what I said about overcoming it, and NEVER EVER EVER try it. I swear, the way I think about it, is probably scarrier than actually being afraid of death =)
To Danny:
That is one sucky, incredibly horrible, and slightly sad, way to die. Maybe I should cut down on the Seinfeld then, that show will be the death of me XD
I think that this is possibly the most sensitive topic of all the blogs so far. Fear is already something that people want to keep hidden from others and not mention on a daily basis. However, helping someone overcome and face their fears is a true mark of caring and friendship. I think that currently I do not have one single BIGGEST fear. There are two significant things in my life that keep me from revealing my entire personality and character.
One of these fears involves almost every aspect in sports. I’m sure that everyone has the fear of failure. In soccer, I may play less aggressive in certain situations because I am afraid that if they get passed me they will be open to score, and containing them will allow other people to make moves and the opponent to make a mistake. Sometimes in softball I doubt my own abilities and sometimes second-guess myself when stealing or making a play in the field because I’m afraid of getting caught and automatically ‘failing.’ Everyone says that if you tell yourself not to make a mistake when fielding a ground ball, then your almost bond to have an error. It’s very difficult, athletes know to place the positive “YES I CAN,” motive into our minds and step above the competition. However, this is what makes certain players so incredible. They have a positive ‘mind gym’ that mentally wins them the game. Another fear I have involving sports is the having my season or possibly career ended with an injury. I have seen many friends tear their ACL, meniscus, MCL, break there ankle, foot, tear ligaments, and have to go to rehab for an extensive surgery. Knock on wood, I have not severely been injured yet, but I am waiting for the day when I have to miss a season of softball or soccer because of a painful injury. However, this is why coaches tell you to play every game like it’s your last. You never know what can happen tomorrow so don’t have any regrets when the game is over. Take every chance and opportunity to excel so if something ever does happen you can at least know that you gave it everything you had when you played.
Like Jen was saying, another common teenage fear is the fear of love and rejection.
“One of the fears that result from this is to be let down and to let others down. It makes it a thousand times harder when you truly care about—when you love—that person. If I don’t love them, and if they don’t love me, then it’s so much easier for me not to care.”
What Jen says is very true with me as well. Although motivational speakers and many other people preach giving life your ‘ALL’ and not holding back your real character, few of us practice this. I fear not only rejection, but any general diminishing of my feelings. I don’t want to hurt others and I don’t want to BE hurt by others, however like Scheaffer was saying this is an inevitable part of life that allows you to develop your character and fin who you are. I remember Mr. Costal saying last year that everyone will suffer heartbreak and everyone’s heart will be in a million pieces before you find your ‘true love.’ When I heard this I was like, “wtf! That sucks; I don’t want to be on the verge of depression because of some ridiculous guy.” But apparently experiencing that will allow you to realize love when it really slaps you in the face. A lot of this is getting repetitive, but in general the fear of someone really accepting you for who YOU are, is a fear for me, but at the same time, makes you feel blissful (just wanted to use my fav. word) inside. Ewww I know that was pretty gross because it was about love, but I guess that’s why it’s a fear.
Okay, back to my fears.
I don’t mean to say that I spend every waking hour thinking about me inevitable end, but it still freaks me out beyond real reason. I get hot, shaky, yet I feel numb. I twitch uncontrollably and make this weird noise that’s kind of like a whine and a scream. My chest gets all tight and I can’t help but to cry. I get like this whenever it gets really bad, when my fear is beyond my ability to control, and I do not enjoy it at all. My triggers for these are all brought on by myself, my trains of thought on certain subjects; if I look into the night sky for too long or get really excited for something that I enjoy or get overly frustrated, my fear kicks in.
But there are thing that I can do to stop the triggers and calm myself back down. I used to talk to my mom a lot when I was little, and I still do. She has this really cool ability to calm me down and make me forget and accept me fear. Reading the scriptures and prayer also helps. Religious things help me out, calm me down.
Now, on to my funnier fears:
I have a fear of people, but not just any people, but of well respected people.
I have a fear of exploding teeth and randomly losing my teeth.
Getting stuck in some random tight gap and not being able to get back out.
Not being able to take off rings.
These demon llamas that I sometimes dream about (not real llamas, just demons ones)
And I don’t like moths. Those things are the kamikaze pilots of the sky. They are EVIL!
I don’t really know what else I fear. But I do know the things I don’t fear: heights, spiders, snakes, the devil, psychos, people breaking into song and dance (no offense Sarah, I love you) rabid animals, hobos, the dark, or monsters. In fact, I love monsters. They are my best friends (I had a weird childhood, need I say more?)
Yay fear! From my seat in the second row of room 309, I stab at thee!
Serj- yeah, I have rather in depth reasons for most of my fears (and lack thereof.) I would think that death would be the number one fear of most people because of its mystery and that we just don’t know. For that matter, I have a fear of reincarnation as well. I like the way I am, the way I think, feel, and my memories. I don’t want to forget those things that make me who I am. I don’t think many people think of things from my exact view point, which is okay, but it sure makes it hard for me to talk to them sometimes. (thanks again for responding to my blog! Hugs and kisses!)
Alice- you really know how to make someone think, you know that?
Eva- failures and the like are all things that are a part of life, they come with the territory. I like what you said about the fact that fear keeps you alive. I agree and disagree at the same time. Fear can both help and hinder us in life, they help us run yet they also ground us in place. Fear is a tricky companion.
Not like moths? With their faces, and their huge dark eyes? And when new-hatched and wet, they cling to your fingers, slowly flexing their wings open and shut, open and shut, until the crumpled cloth expands to full brilance, spaning your hand with green, or purple-and-gold, or lightening-tipped brown.
Yeah, you can tell how I spent my childhood. I kept silk-moths whenever I could find the larvae. And watched them almost constantly. You'd be amazed by how intellegent they are.
To Myra:
O.o; Wow... I don't really really know how to put it, but I love how sincere (and random) your words are! Demonic llamas? I have nightmares about being killed by a very holy spirit that I don't want to name just in case I get laughed out... Yes, I'm pretty sure you know who, Sergei... -_-' It's scary... But yea, I'm pretty sure everyone's scared of death, but I can understand what you mean when you say you can't stand the thought of it. The possibilities of death are endless... it's really scary... *shudders*
Oh, and I was just wondering when your gymnastics competitions end so I can set a date for the elections for the club. ^_^ Great post as always by the way! I'd say more, but I have an annoying 4th grader to take care of right now... -_-' So disrespectful....
You can feel your hand pounding against a cold steel door to try to escape the voices moving closer to you, but there is no sound coming from the knocking. You can feel your breath escaping your lips and your vocal cords stretching in your attempts to scream. Yet, there are no sounds coming from your mouth as you clench your throat through repeated attempts to hear even the slightest whisper. Your hand begins to bang against the walls to the point that red-purple bruises form around your arms, and the pounding of your heart rushes to your head in one of the worst migraines imaginable. You throw a chair across the room, knock over a lamp, and tear down strange portraits of graveyards covering the walls. Nevertheless, you find yourself in a dark, unknown world that lacks sound. The only thing that you have been left to hear are the amplified sounds of teardrops running down your cheeks and hitting the concrete floor. Nightmares are often ignored or prevented from affecting the minds of both children and adults when the possibility of its occurrence overrules one’s ability to convince themselves that such dreams are not true/possible. For example, a very common fear of parents, especially those who have small children, is the possibility of having that child being kidnapped. When the parent no longer seems able to convince themselves that the likelihood of such an event occurring is near to nothing, they will try to simply ignore the possibility. This is exactly what Mary Manin Morrissey, was trying to say as she powerfully stated, “You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.” Your faith is your ability to see that an event is unlikely to happen, but at times, your fear of this event can grow to the point that you can no longer convince yourself that it is unlikely to occur. As a result, you make repeated attempts to simply ignore or forget about such an event occurring. Nevertheless, such attempts to ignore fears or nightmares can result in much worse consequences than focusing upon them.
The complete loss of my vision would have to be my greatest fear. Of all the senses I possess, vision has always been the one I hold in the highest respects. Perhaps this is my worst fear because of the fact that my future is going to revolve around traveling and exploring new places. Without vision, this task would not only be practically impossible, but it would also become rather pointless. I can just imagine myself going to visit the Rocky Mountains and only being able to feel cold air, smell the scent of pine trees, hear leaves rustling, and taste the cup of hot chocolate in my hand as I am left only to wonder what the scene before me must look like. Rather than losing my sight, I would rather lose all four of my other senses. In psychology this week, we did a project in which we had to wear a blind fold and walk around the school with a partner trying to go up and down steps, open a locker, wash our hands, and get a drink of water. As a simple black bandana shielded me from the objects in front of me, I found myself not able to walk straight, and consistently feeling as though a wall were right in front of me. Then, what surprised me the most was when I could not remember what the classroom looked liked before I went back into the room to take my blindfold off. I had imagined that the room would be dark and formatted very differently from what I had encountered the moment I took off the blindfold. I did not immediately return to my seat because it took me a few moments to take in what had been set before me. The room was very bright, much bigger than I had imagined, and the windows and blackboard seemed very different from where I had pictured they would be. Losing your sight is like being detached from a whole other world which you will never be able to make contact with, at least not in the same way.
As a child, my worst fear had always been to look someone directly in the eye. To this day, it continues to be a problem for me, but I have found a way to counter its level of influence. My method of trying to overcome it has been noticed and mentioned to me by several people, and it has actually become more of a habit for me. Whenever I see someone I know, I look down, then look back up at them to wave or smile. Usually, I find myself looking back up and seeing them look in a different direction, but at least I do not fear looking into people’s eyes as much as I used to. The reason for having this fear as a child was because I had always been afraid of how the person may have been judging me in their mind. Plus, I have never excelled in explaining myself while looking directly into a person’s eyes. Overall though, I believe that we possess such fears as looking into a person’s eyes and losing our sight because we fear not being able to overcome such inflictions. Once you lose your sight, the chances of gaining it back are nonexistent unless a cure for blindness is found within a person’s lifetime. Also, the fear of looking into someone’s eyes seems to be a fear which cannot be overcome. As humans, we like to be in control at all times. Once this control is taken away from us, we fear having to adapt and having to change. Our faith that we can overcome such fears dramatically decreases, and as a result, we sometimes choose to “block” such fears.
I often find myself stopping from doing things because of fear, which, for me, often leads to regret. For instance, once I had truly realized my regret if I had not accepted to my sister’s invitation to go to a Chinese restaurant with her boyfriend and a friend of hers after a band concert last year. At first, I was not so sure that it would be a good idea, especially considering the fact that it was eleven o’clock at night. Nevertheless, I went along for the ride, and it became a moment which would serve as a memory. It is my goal to accumulate as much of these memories as possible or else I might end up with nothing in life to look back on.
As discussed in Gavin de Becker’s book, “The Gift of Fear”, responding to fear can actually save someone’s life. We, as humans, know when something feels out of place or just doesn’t seem right, and not responding to such feelings can have dangerous consequences. In his book, he explains the story of a twenty-seven year old woman named Kelly who was have trouble getting some groceries up to her apartment door. As she tried to carry all the bags up the steps, one of the bags ripped open, and a man from around the corner said to let him get it. He went so far as to insist to let him carry the bags not just up to her level, and not just outside the door, but instead into her room. She knew the situation had not felt right the very moment she heard his voice from around the corner. There was something in his voice, something in the way he insisted to pick up the groceries, and something in the way in which he followed behind her up the steps that just didn’t seem right to her. She unfortunately had ignored these feelings and was raped the moment she let him into her apartment room to set the groceries down. As you can see, fear can actually be seen as a life-saving device because the senses we are fulfilled with when we feel fear allow us to make choices that can greatly help us, as long as we choose to listen to these feelings. One should never choose to ignore or block feelings of fear, even if the event we fear seems unlikely or impossible to control because the benefits of listening to fear are just too great to pass by. Often, the event can be controlled, and responding to such events can therefore only make us stronger.
In response to Devon P.:
In your blog there were a few things that got my attention. One was the fact that you possess a great fear of losing things and you believe that even inanimate objects have feelings. This is kind of embarrassing, but as a child I used to talk to all of my stuffed animals around my bed which always had to be put in a certain order because I always wanted to keep track of them. I would also repeat the same things to all fourteen of them (it was a really bad OCD disorder as a kid, so bad that I would stay up for hours at night until I repeated the same things to each one of them and made sure that they were all in the exact places I wanted them). Another thing that got my attention was when you stated that you felt as if people know when they are in trouble and that fear help us to save ourselves. This is exactly what Gavin de Becker explained in his book which I talked about called “The Gift of Fear” (you might have heard about it on Oprah if you watch it). In fact, the story that you described about your bike ride to Maegan’s house had a lot of similarities in common to the part of his book which I included in my blog. I could not agree with you more that fear can greatly help us in times of danger and that such impulses to take action should certainly not be ignored.
I actually disagree with this quote. In my experience, my fears motivate me much more than my faith. Whereas I question myself constantly, and my faith wavers, my fears are tangible and concrete, and never leave me. Even though my faith may be a beacon of light ahead of me, my fears are a dark abyss behind me, chasing me through life. I can't escape them; I never will. This ever-lurking danger to my dreams is always with me, and so I run from them. In this sense, it is my fear, then, that challenges me to run towards the light, and to reach my goals, not my faith in myself.
For the bulk of my life, I was generally unaffected by major fears. In fact, I can't remember having a single, distinct fear. I wansn't afraid of being alone, or having no friends, or of the dark, or of dying, or of my parents dying, or the boogeyman in the closet. I was, for the most part, a fearless child. Of course, there were times where I shrank under my covers, closely watching the shadows that danced on my walls, imagining unspeakable horrors that lie within my closet, but, for the most part, I had no presiding fear.
This is not the case now, however. My past and my future haunt me every day, and I don't know where to turn or where to go in order to escape such oppressing fear. What, exactly, do I fear? Living a meaningless existence. I can't bear to think that when I die, my name will die too, and everything that I worked for, fought for, and, probably, died for, will break down and fade away, just like my decomposing corpse. I often ask myself, "What's the point?", but have to shove this thought out quickly out of my head. It kills me to think that death may truly be the end for Maegan Reese. I'm not talking about going to Heaven or Hell or any other spiritual afterlife, because my aethiest beliefs don't really support such places, but rather the termination of my name, and of my legacy. It scares me to think that after I die, no one will remember me in generations to come. What is the point of me existing on this earth if I won't have any impact on it?
I think I have this fear because I have such an elevated sense of self-importance. It seems really hypocritcal of me to say this, but, please, let me explain. Although I doubt myself, and I don't place value on my abilities, I feel personally obligated to change things. I feel like some great responsibility was given to me recently; like I have been armed with knowledge and now need to utilize it. The way I see it, if I don't change the world, then I've been a complete and utter waste of life. This raises problems for me, because although I know what I have to do, I don't know exactly how to do it.
I know my destination, I just have no means of getting there.
My actions, for the most part, are motivated by my fears. I don't do things because I have faith in myself, and because I think I will suceed. I do them because I fear that if I don't, then I'm missing out on some big life opportunity. Therefore, I always push to do the unthinkable, and even though people credit me with being ambitious and tenecious, its really because I'm scared for my life (literally).
I don't care when I die, or how. I could die tommorow, for all I care. As long as I do something, anything, to make an impact that will last an eternity, I can die happy. Until then, however, I'll keep running, keep fighting, and keeping doing what I do in hopes of escaping my fear.
Linds-
First off, I'm loving the explicitly implicit reference to our favorite caveman. (*cough, cough*) Obviously, you aren't the cause of the Titanic tradegy, or anything else unnamed person says. He can chill with his bad self, because everyone knows that everything good that's ever happened in the world is because of you. :l Seriously.
Anyways, I'm surprised that you wrote about rejection, because it always seems to me like you're in the middle of the group of friends, and that you're loved by all. I know we had problems last year, but I've come to realize that we're actually a lot more alike then we may admit.. and I admire you for it! Don't worry, girl, you won't ever get rejected by me! ;D
"You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith."
The quote explains that if you let your fear run wild and start having doubts, you will end up giving up on your dreams. No matter how much faith you have in something, your fears might dominate your feelings and there’s a good chance you will let your dream float away.
Right now, my biggest fear is this: Sometime in the future, I wish to become a movie director like my dad. However, this is a very competitive field, so I have been seriously thinking about if I should follow the instinct and get my dream job, (which also happens to be on my star), or if I should forget about it and major in something that will guarantee me a lucrative job after I graduate. Everybody always says to follow your dreams and do what you want to do, and what you’re good at, but I can’t help but have second thoughts. Will I make it as a filmmaker at all? Will I be good enough? What if a lot of people are out for the job, will I have a chance? So in fear that I won’t be good enough and I’ll end up wasting years looking for a job, I am ready to give up on my dream career. I think I’m afraid of following my dream of being a filmmaker because I know there’s a chance that I won’t make it, and competition discourages me. This fear is new to me, since I’m getting closer to choosing a major in college, and shortly after, a career. This fear had not even crossed my mind until a couple of months ago because up until then, it was always possible in my mind and I wouldn’t even think of the consequences, but only that I was going to do it.
When I was little, what I feared most was the usual things little kids are afraid of: darkness, strangers, being alone, oceans, and heights. I still haven’t overcome these fears, except for one. I give credit for helping me overcome my fear of heights partly to project adventure, and partly to this mountain I climbed this summer. I faced my fear, got up high, and forgot all about how scary I used to think it was.
I think I am, or were, afraid of these things because even before I give them a chance, my mind starts creating these questions and doubts about it, which makes me fear it, even if they might not be scary.
I stop myself from doing things all the time because of fear. From little common situations to fearing about what people think, I always hesitate to say or do something that I might regret later. Also, in fear of what will happen to me in the afterlife, I stop myself from doing many things and try to lead a good, decent life.
Sometimes I don’t raise my hand and answer questions from fear of being wrong. I hesitate to speak up about some things in fear of sounding stupid.
Most of the time, I regret not acting upon my instincts and following in the steps of fear. These instances are common from why didn’t I go on that rollercoaster, to why didn’t I say yes to that, or why didn’t I eat that cake at the birthday party.
Fear can be seen as a good thing more from a religious point of view. Because of the fear that I have of where I will go after I die, I try to be a better person and follow a positive lifestyle. Fear keeps me in line and prevents me from doing things I should not be doing.
As Sergei said, there’s no way around the truthiness of this quote. You just can’t deny it.
Unlike most people, I’m not afraid of failure. And I don't mean to come off condescending or cocky in anyway. There’s that old cliché saying that goes;
“It’s only a mistake if you fail to fix it!”
Failure is such an important aspect of life, and you have to have a healthy dose of it. Because face it, you have to be at the bottom before you reach the top. And the times I do feel really really stressed out (rare, but it happens), one little phrase helps me get through whatever I'm facing. It hasn’t failed me yet. It’s almost magical. These three little words seem to overpower me when I'm facing an obstacle. You want to know what the phrase is? It’s;
“I got this.”
Corny, I know. But saying those words puts my goals in perspective and helps me accomplish what I need to do. It really helps me get through this AP nonsense (looking at you, El Calculus). It's Janiru's all purpose guide to success.
So the fear of failure has never been a big hindrance to me. So what is my fear? I touched upon it a week or two ago, and my fear would be not finding the answers to the questions I’ve always had. These questions are very broad and overseeing, so I’ll leave it at that. I don't want to come off ranting again. Problem is, I really don’t have a fear of not finding the answers (my mind is odd, I know), since I have this overwhelming feeling that I will find what I'm looking for. And I can't argue with that.
So I guess my actual fear that I can write on paper is the fear or not having time to do everything I want to do. If you didn’t know, I’ve always wanted to be a doctor ever since a small kid. I was about as sick as can be growing up, and the emergency room was pretty much my second home. I guess that’s where I’ve built my penchant for helping people. My goals in life are to do a lot of charitable work, go soul searching, and help the less fortunate. I’ve always wanted to go to a third-world country and do medicinal work, and I plan on joining the Peace Corps at some point in my life. It's a small world, and somebody has to help out, right?
My fear (perhaps it’s irrational) is that I will lose these feelings; this desire that sort of keeps me going. Perhaps it’s from a conversation I had with a friend, who said that we lose our drive as we get older. I don’t want that to happen. I’m around 99.9 percent sure I’ll get everything I want done, but that little bit of uncertainty does kill me a bit.
And although that was one of my fears growing up, it wasn’t the biggest (c’mon, I had bigger things to worry about). My biggest fear as a child was that I couldn’t be a Power Ranger. If you didn’t know, Power Rangers are absolutely HUGE in Japan. About 50 times more so than here. My life ambition at the time was to be the Blue Ranger (or Green, anyone but the Pink one), get superpowers, and beat up villains. As retarded as it sounds looking back now, I considered the whole universe real, and was convinced I would one day possess kung-fu crime fighting abilities and be able to summon giant robot animals. I suppose this whole thing could be from my desire to do good… I don’t know. But that truly was my biggest fear growing up. I overcame it by growing up, of course. Though I do admit, I still think I would make a damn fine Power Ranger.
And just to list off some phobias I have (had); I used to be deathly afraid of clowns as a child. That’s normal. I’ve always had a giant fear of balloons, mainly because my brother popped one in my face when I was a baby. Since then, I’m afraid they’ll spontaneously burst in my face. It's pretty serious stuff. And I do not like roller coasters either(ask Jordan or Brittany G, or Vicky C). Not because of the speed, but because of that feeling of NOT being in control).
And yes, like most people, fear is something that keeps me back at times. I usually have no clue why I’m afraid, but my gut and my brain tells me to stop doing something, so on occasion, I do end up stopping myself. I like to think I’m a pretty rational guy (disagree with me if you want), so I guess there’s a part of me that knows when I should and shouldn’t do something. It’s that gut feeling that we all have. And it’s a love hate relationship, because half the time we end up feeling pretty damn bad about ourselves. Like this morning, I had a gut feeling that I knew where the Optometrist’s office was. Well I actually didn’t, for I ended up at the dentist’s at eight in the morning. So I drove like a madman through traffic, and ended up at English Creek about 6 minutes late. People say we learn to hone this sense as we get older… well I’m looking forward to that. However, our fears come in handy in avoiding dangers. It's that natural predatory sense that we keep hidden.
The fear of the unknown is usually what saves humans from killing ourselves (though our bouts with nuclear weapons is changing my opinion on this). Through trial-and-error, we've come to embrace the familiar and shun the strange. Unlike the idiots in scary movies, I'd never set foot in an ominous looking house with blood on the doorstep. Hell no, I'm running the other way around and gettin' out of there. So fear does this wonderful job of keeping our curiosity in check. It's what saved the hides of the cavemen back in the day.
So we all have our fears, whether they be rational or irrational. And it shapes our personalities and characters and separates the risk-taker and the play-it-safer, and the idiot from the genius. Even though it gets a bad rep, fear is an essential part of every living being in the world.
So ends another messy blog by me. Excuse me while I go eat another Whopper.
Myra : I didn’t forget, I actually replied. And I (along with everyone) feared death at some point in my life. Now I’m not saying I wouldn’t mind if you killed me right now, but it’s something you gotta accept. It's inevitable, and a part of life. Knowing you however, there’s probably a lot more involved than you’re letting on :p
Your odd fears cracked me up, btw.
Llamas?
Leonor:
"I think we all are afraid of the future at least a little bit. We all dream and want things to come true sometime in our lives."
you're right about all of us being afraid of the future, i actually had a whole paragraph written about how im afraid of facing the future, but deleted it since my blog seemed too long.
but yeah, we are all definately afraid of the future at least a little bit
Morrissey is talking about the people who sit on the sidelines and never take any chances with their lives for fear of failing. He wants to tell them that the most important thing in life is going after your dreams at all costs. By saying this, he feels that if you let fear get in the way of something as important as your dreams, you’ve prioritized wrongly. I find myself sometimes being the person that he is addressing here.
I fear a lot of things. I wish I could say the opposite and be able to truthfully state that old cliché about being as brave as a lion in all situations, but I can’t. Whenever I do find myself acting bravely, it is because I have convinced myself that I am at the time, or I have no choice but to go along against my better judgment (which is usually to run). My biggest fear however has to be the fear of loosing things. It hasn’t always been this way. There were times when I felt like all I could possibly do was gain things because so few things in my life were constant and reliable. The past year, for the first time in my life, I have been almost completely satisfied with the most important aspects of my daily life. I feel that I have finally surrounded myself with people that love me and want to be in my life as much as I want to be in theirs. Even my parents have finally relaxed on me (but not too much, like to the point of not caring as some parents do) and are finally realizing that they can’t control every aspect of my life. It is a very scary thought for them as well as me that I will be going to college sooner that we know, but that isn’t something that I can say I fear too much. My friendships have had their ups and downs in the past, but this year, I’ve found out who the true ones are. They are the people I can turn to and cry with and laugh with all in the same day. I also have a boyfriend of over a year that respects me and cares about my feelings and tries to make me happy whenever things are going downhill. It’s a love, not so much love (but not hate) relationship at times, but I wouldn’t trade my experiences and time with him for anything in the world. He is one of my best friends, so now for the first time, I have more than one best friend to talk to about things and lean on when I have issues bothering me. Over the past year, I have become less materialistic, more outgoing, and generally a better person than I think I have ever been. Because of all these things, I feel I have a lot to loose now more than ever. The saying “you don’t miss what you don’t have” holds a lot of meaning to me. After having what I think of as a pretty good life, I don’t want to miss the things that I have been accustomed to if they suddenly leave or are gone. I now have all the things that I presume I would miss if gone. I constantly worry about the people in my life leaving. I feel that every person that is close to me gives me some sort of strength and confidence that helps me to live a better, more fulfilling life. Weather it be that they are good for laughs, or for times when I need a shoulder to cry on, I constantly rely on the people in my life for strength and support. It’s not something I am necessarily proud of, but it’s a truth. I know I could act alone if I had to, but I feel it’s much easier and better to experience things with others. Especially tough things. This probably has something to do with maturity, and I guess I just haven’t hit that stage of independence yet.
I used to fear being alone at night in my room when I was younger. I used to cry and cry about it. My mom was very protective of me. For a year, I used to cry anytime anyone but her held me. After hearing all the stories, I couldn’t have possibly been the best baby to look after. I used to make my mom sit in my room until I fell asleep every single night for a long time. And after I had fallen asleep and she had left for her own bed, I would wake up and go into her room. I don’t know exactly what triggered this fear. I cant ever remember being afraid of monsters under my bed or in my closet. I honestly think it was the feeling of being alone in the dark that made my imagination go wild. It was always about someone coming and taking my parents or one of them tragically disappearing, me never to see them again. I can’t remember ever thinking about a kidnapper actually taking me. It was always my parents I was worried about not seeing in the morning because of something that happened to them. This is probably due to my sheltered childhood and how much time I spent with my family. That strong bond was built, and I couldn’t stand the thought of it being lost. I also am just naturally a worrier. I have gotten better about it, but I still let it creep back to me from time to time. When I was younger, I also would worry every time I got left with a babysitter. I would worry about car accidents more than anything. I can’t even begin to think about all the times I have started to hyperventilate because they were an hour later than they had told me they would be. I guess in a way I have the same fear now as I did then. I now worry about loosing everyone in my life, not just my parents, but it’s generally the same issue. I have tried to get over these fears by telling myself that only a small percent of the things you worry about actually happen. Still, I can’t seem to keep my worries too far out of my thoughts.
I try to not let fear stop me from doing things. I am pretty scared of flying in airplanes. This is pretty ironic because my dad is a pilot and all. I often go on trips and have to suck it up and look brave. This is partly to not let my dad know about my hidden fear that he would be baffled by, and partly because my mom and little sister are even more afraid than I am. I have to keep it together for them. I usually wont let fear take a hold of me and my decisions when I know that my not doing something will directly affect others in a negative way. I’m a people pleaser. Something like going on a roller coaster with a lot of drops is a case in which I will let fear freeze me to the kind, hard ground. I don’t think it will affect anyone but my stomach if I go on that ride or not. In the case of the airplane, if my sister and mom see me freaking out over a little turbulence, I know they both will go into full on panic attacks. It’s sad to be saying that I am only brave for other people. I want to be brave for myself. I have gotten better about opening up and trying to stop worrying about looking stupid in front of people. I blame this all on my boyfriend who is Mr. Look-at-me. Opposites do attract. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Before him, really no one knew who I was within our school. Because of the attention he just naturally likes to draw to himself, I have been put into some of these situations. I didn’t know what I was getting into over a year ago, but I am so glad that I decided to give him a chance because I highly doubt I could have opened up this much in a year. I have partially gotten over my fear of having too much attention on me, and because of that, I have met a lot of new great people.
I try to not think of things I have not done in the past as regrets. I look at them as things I know I will work harder on next time. I think about how there must have been a good reason that I didn’t do something because of fear. It may not have been too rational of a reason, but there was still one reason or another. Because of this, I don’t dwell on being afraid of things in the past. If later on I am presented with the same situations again, I know I do not have to act the same way again just because of the past. Sometimes fear is even a good thing. It’s what keeps us from doing stupid things. Some people need a little more fear in their life.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." Now that my obligatory Dune quote is done, I'll move on to my real interpretation of the quote Bunje prescribed. My first quote describes the objectivity of the self, in relation to fear. Morrissey's quote refers to the position of faith as the one thing that can keep us out of the raging whirlwind of fear. You cannot achieve a dream through fear, only through the things that make you you, rather than things which threaten you. To me, that's a faith that there is a me which transcends fear, anger, all the petty emotions that hold us back as humankind. A me, or an ego, as Freud would say, that can transcend fear and criticism to realize my dreams. That there is a faith, which when you lose it, you lose yourself to the dark side of emotion. (Full Circle Much?)
Now, on to my greatest fear as a little kid. At first, I thought it was the stereotypical fear of the dark. That was part of it, but not even a fraction of the depth. Then, from there, my overly logical mind leaped to fear of the unknown. But even there, that's still not entirely accurate. So what then? Then my mind hit an idea. In my younger years, for those of you who knew me well, (still don't know exactly who that is) I was a know-it-all. Being a smartypants was what made me better than my older sister, so that was my goal in life. So then I started thinking about the fear of being wrong (horror of horrors, by the by) but that still wasn't my biggest fear. Then I hit on it. My biggest fear, the driving force of near all my actions as a young 'un. Fear of being inferior. This has changed by now, but yadda yadda blabbity bloo, this is about then. We'll get to now in a moment.
I was and am, to a certain extent, the second of two. Now that my 'big' (5'4”) sister moved to Boston for college, I'm getting a bit more of the only child treatment. But back to then. Back in the day, I was constantly being compared with Chris in everything I did. Especially grades. Whoa, especially grades. I was better. I almost always was better than my sister. But my friends, where I was a bit more concerned, I was not. I've always been an oddball and a jack of all trades. It's awesome. But my friends all seemed to specialize. I was left in the dust in some things they knew, and in things I knew, they were totally uninterested. So, here I was, always better than someone I idolized, (I still love my big sis), and yet people who were my 'equals' were regularly taking me to the cleaners in sports, games, plain old fights, you name it. It's easy to see the source of my anxiety.
I do believe that this has always been the basic fear that keeps me going. I don't think this fear of being judged inferior has ever changed, but I do think the scale I measure myself against has. I am an intensely loyal person. This is why relationships confuse me a bit. When I'm friends, truly friends with someone that relationship, that friendship is as important as any true love could be. That kind of loyalty is not something I give easily, but when I do I'm as hard to get rid of as that little pimple right on your forehead where it wont go away no matter how hard you try and you think that everyone notices but no one really does, but in a good way. My main fear now, as near as I can express it, is failing my friends. No rejection, none of that. I'm lucky enough to have found friends who will stick with me through thick and thin, so rejection's not really an issue. But failing them, or even thinking I have or will is enough to lose sleep over. I see my friends being completely supportive to me, and me being a drain on them and I think 'wow, what a jerk thing to do.' So I can't. I'm so afraid of letting down people who count on me for sanity (or insanity, as the case may be) I cannot let them help me. Letting them help me would be admitting I'm not good enough to be their friend, and that I just can't do. Irrational? Yes. Stupid? Yes. Am I gonna change that? Probly not.
How often do I let fear stop me from doing something I want to do? Very often, almost every day. Do I regret it? Usually not. See, fear of consequences keeps my homicidal impulses in check. For example, I'll want to walk up to Little-Miss-Full-of-herself-at-band (Both of Them. Ali knows) and push her clear off the major's stand. (ten feet high) Do I regret not doing that? Usually about five minutes later when we get screamed at I do, but at the same time, I know that assaulting a leader will not help any of my sneaky plans. Plus, my time in band would be over, and I'd be cut off from music. (NOOOO!!!!!)
Do I think fear is ever a good thing? Yes, in the sense that that little voice telling you to check your parachute again before you base jump is helpful, as is the voice that tells you to reload your weapon *before* charging into the room full of zombies. Fear keeps us alive, and isn't fear of failure what keeps us going in this class? How many of you would really care about grades if your parents weren't grade-centric? Exactly. Fear is useful to keep you alive and going, but is only one tool in an arsenal to get where you want to be, and to get what you want. Then again, Nukes are useful too, but like fear, should be used sparingly.
“I hate letting people down, or when people aren’t happy. When they aren’t happy, I’m not happy because then I get this fear inside of my stomach that doesn’t go away no matter how hard I try.”
Linds, we are both people pleasers. I think we have had this conversation before. Every time I’m with you, I feel so happy and care free that I want to kick you for even thinking you have this effect on people :]. But seriously, I know what you mean. I always hate to find out that I have made someone unhappy. My worst fear is that they view me differently because of my mistakes. I feel that I might not ever get the chance to make it up to them or that I’ll loose them forever as friends.
“In my experience, my fears motivate me much more than my faith. Whereas I question myself constantly, and my faith wavers, my fears are tangible and concrete, and never leave me.”
Maegan, my love. This is an eloquent way of stating how I feel about life and fear in general. Fear is something I can rely on. Sad but true. I am constantly questioning the very basics of me, my religion, my life, and pretty much everything around me. Fear, I feel, is what pushes me along when I want to give up (especially the fear of failing in this case). Everyone has fear. My fears are the things I know I won’t change unless there is a damn good reason to, so I know I will keep moving in a forward direction at running pace.
"You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith."
Dreams are an integral part of a person’s life. They help shape who you are, who you were, and who you will become. When we begin to lose sight of our dreams because of outside influences, our focus shifts from why we can accomplish something to why we can’t. We start to notice things that we hadn’t before, like other people’s failures, and the reasons why we are incapable of achieving our dream. These thoughts slowly grow in our minds like a parasite that slowly eats away at our self-confidence, leaving us another hopeless being in a world full of hopeless beings. Whatever your fear, whether it be rejection, loss, regret, the future, loneliness, etc. is what ultimately may keep you from reaching your destination. Everything starts with belief in yourself, with the faith that you can do anything. Once that faith is replaced by fear, the chances of reaching your goal are virtually gone.
I have a lot of fears. I’m not really sure I have one particular “biggest fear”, but rather a few interchangeable fears that impact my decisions and sometimes prevent me from living my life. One great fear that I have is losing a loved one. I’m sure everyone has a similar fear, but I have never lost someone close to me, and am not sure how I would handle it. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to lose a close friend or family member, and although I hope it never happens to me, it is an event that everybody goes through at one point or another. Another fear I have is that of disappointment. I can’t stand to disappoint people, especially my parents, considering all they have done for me in my life. I always wonder what they would think before I make a decision. This fear has a strong impact on my life, although usually not in a negative way. I feel this mindset allows me to make the best decisions for myself. The one fear that probably impacts my life the most, though, is that of failure. It kind of ties in with disappointment, because I figure if I fail, that failure must lead to someone being disappointed. The more I think of it, the more irrational the fear of failure seems to me. I mean, no one succeeds all the time. Everyone has setbacks, obstacles that make them stronger. If we don’t experience these failures, how will we ever grow? But instead of trying something, failing, and learning from it, I usually decide to not even make an attempt. Why? Because I might disappoint. The funny thing is, I think I would be more proud of myself if I tried and failed than didn’t try at all. So really, I’m disappointing myself out of the fear that I might disappoint others.
When I was little, I really wasn’t scared of too much. I was up for trying anything, until I figured out the hard way that you could get hurt from jumping out of a tree. I was a little more cautious after that, and that could be where my fear of heights began. I was also scared of trampolines (from flipping off one), bats (because they somehow ended up in my room at night), stairs (from falling down them which, by the way, I still do), and America’s Most Wanted because I swore that I just saw that dude they described. I began to get over these fears as I realized I would be missing out on a lot of fun if I let my worries decide what I was going to do. Sure, you might get hurt, but it’s always worth it in the end. I guess that same thought could be applied to my current fears.
Fear can be a great thing, because overcoming it is one of the most difficult things to do. But for those who are able to defeat their fears, it strengthens them and molds them into the person they are meant to become.
Oh, and now that I'm out of super-analytical mode, I'm also afraid of Daddy Long Legs and cars. Daddy Long legs because of a dream I had as a kid, and I will still give them a wide berth or stomp and grind. And cars because I've been hit by a truck and then was in a car accident yesterday, so they don't seem to like me.
Fear is a problem all of us face on a regular basis. Fear is a natural feeling, but when fear becomes the main priority in our lives then we lose sight of what life is really about. People forget that, as far as we know, we only live once. It may not seem so, but life is short, as they say “The days drag on as the years fly by.” Before we know it, everyone we know will die, whether you acknowledge that is up to you. With that being said, people need to realize that life is a lot shorter than you think. Before we know it we will be going away to college, then graduating, finding a job and settling down. When we block out our dreams and lose sight of what is important in life, we allow fear to overcome us. Fear begins to control our lives. If anyone has ever seen the show Monk you know that people with extreme cases of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder cannot live life without out fear of germs or whatever it may be. Life is not worth living if it is spent consumed by fear.
The biggest fear I have is the fear that I will not succeed in life. I am afraid of failing miserably and having to live a shitty life forever and ever. This fear is partially coupled with the fear of rejection. I fear that I will be rejected from colleges and forced to live a life destined to shitty jobs and misery. This fear is predominantly caused by my parents. I have seen the hard times they went through in order to give me a good life. My father was a carpenter who worked rain, snow, sleet, whatever he had to do. Although when he had his first heart attack he was forced to retire. So with him not working my mom had to work two jobs to pay for the plethora of medical bills. This leads me to my next biggest fear. My father is one of the toughest people I have ever met. He has had three heart attacks and a stroke, he has been diabetic since he was twenty two, high blood pressure and other various heart conditions. Luckily for him he has such a strong will power because many people would not be able to deal with all that he has been through. Lucky me, these are all conditions that are typically passed from one generation to the next. These two main fears have driven me to the point in my life that I am now. No one in my family, with the exception of my aunt has ever graduated from college and to me that is not the tradition I want to continue.
As a child I had the common young child fears. As a child I was afraid of growing up. I saw how stressed my parents were on almost a regular basis and did not ever want to turn out that way. I was afraid of the dark. For some reason the unknown had always been frightening to me. However I was never afraid of the boogey man. No one really explained to me what exactly was so scary about him and I had always assumed he was a man covered in boogers, there’s nothing scary about that. Finally the last fear I had as a child of death, not for any profound reasons, I just was not a fan of pain. Despite these fears I never let any of them, nor the ones I possess today, affect the way I act or think. I know that fear should not shelter me and try not to let it. I like to believe that fear is never the aspect that should affect decisions. Fear is something that should be used to help us strive to reach our goals.
To Matt W:
"As irrational as it may sound, my biggest fear is waking up one day and finding out that everyone I know and love has died."
Matt, I know just what you mean. I have the same crazy, irrational fear. I know it is nearly imposiible for everyone I love to just die, but I can't shake the feeling that it could happen. I think that feeling helps you to appreciate all the people in your life who love you a bit more.
I gotta go, time to watch the Phils. We're winning it in six games.
Matt, wasn't that song originally done by Elvis?
Sergei, it was a hypothetical child we were talking about, remember?
Myra, are you serious? People breaking into spontaneous dance and song is a terrifying concept (and also proof of that hive mind I was excluded from).
Also, you owe me chocolate.
Eva, I'm going to have to side with Myra on this one. Moths are freakin' wierd. No offense.
Jani, I loved your "I got this" thing. I do the same thing, except I say, "I'm Sarah friggin' Crane! Blank is no match for me!" which is even cornier than your choice of words.
After reading the line by Mary Manin Morrissey, another quote by Babe Ruth (Hilary and Carly, I know you both are so proud!) comes to mind that is rather similar. “Never let the fear of striking out, keep you from playing the game.” Both quotes generally state: if you allow yourself to succumb to fear, your dreams will be out of reach. So, don’t ever overlook who you are or forget your true potential. Set your goals, go for them, and don’t look back.
My biggest fear as of this moment would be FAILING. No, not in school, in life. My fear is to not have the slightest chance of getting accepted to my dream university or college, to never become successful in my career of choice, or never having a happy family of my own. I’m always worrying about the future, whether it’s tomorrow or 5 years from now. For instance, when it comes to soccer and possibly getting a scholarship in that area, I am scared that I will never have a future in that area. It seems that every where I go there are college coaches roaming in search of talented new players but I am concerned that they aren’t interest in what I have to offer. I fear that I will never get looked at and my dreams of playing in college will never be reached.
When I was little, my list fears would probably over flow this page. I was scared of my dad, most insects/bugs, being alone, strangers, “bad people,” and losing my stuff—just to name a few. Essentially, these fears generated because I was immature and uninformed, as any child was.
I overcame these fears by simply growing up. I learned to ignore the bad things my dad said and did to me and my brother, and pushed him out of my life because he was only a boulder in the road. I realized that the bugs weren’t going to attack me if I let them be, so I just stayed away from them. Because my mom is a single parent and has been for most of my life, I was forced to stay home and watch my brother at a fairly young age. Since I was older, it was my responsibility to take care of and show him that there was nothing to be afraid of (such as strangers and/or “bad people”), although inside I felt as scared as he did. However, this alone helped me get over that fear. When it comes to losing things, I would very often forget my miscellaneous items where ever I went. I got in trouble a lot for this, so I was scared to loose anything. Although this is quite a list, I’m happy to see that I got over these fears essentially on my own.
I feel that part of my present fears have come from the pressure and expectations of my parents. Ever since I can remember, they’ve been urging me to do well in school or practice as hard as I can every day because I need to stand out. At a young age, I didn’t believe it was as big of a deal as they made it, but now I see that I was wrong. I fear that I will never portray my full potential on my journey to success because I feel that I will be taken over by the pressure.
I honestly believe that fear doesn’t stop me from doing very much. Although it can be extremely difficult not to let fear take over, I usually don’t give in. The fear of repercussion does stop me from ripping peoples’ heads off on a daily basis, but that’s not such a bad thing. Of course there are instances in which I regret letting fear stop me from doing what I intended, for example: when I ignore my gut and change my test answers. But other than that, I always give it my all.
I think fear is, for the most part, a very good thing. It subconsciously makes you think twice before performing certain wrong actions that may be blurred at the spur of the moment. Along with this, overcoming fear is what makes your accomplishments so significant. If fear wasn’t there to perhaps hold you back, overcoming it to reach your goal wouldn’t be worth very much. Yes, fear can and does consume the lives of many people, but it was created no to harm us, but to make us stronger.
Jennnnnn -
I always think highly of your perspective on each blog question. Although I don’t always agree, I respect and take interest in your opinion. For this particular question, I admire when you said, “Fear is always a good thing to feel because without it your accomplishments don’t mean much of anything.” I agree with you 100%. If fear wasn’t there as an obstacle, forcing you to overcome it, then anything you do is pretty much worthless. In that case, anyone could achieve what they wanted easily, making your accomplishments no different from anyone else’s. I definitely understand and agree with what you mean :).
To me, the quote above means that if you focus on what you fear, rather than believing that you can overcome any obstacle, there will be a limited amount of joy to life. Self confidence is a key element to a happy, well-lived life. As for my biggest fear, I would say that it is that I will not be accepted to the college of my choice, I will do poorly on the SATs, and I will not decide in time what it is that I want to do in my life. (Not necessarily in that order) This is mostly because my “childhood” years are coming to an end. I’m at a point in my life where I need to make many life decisions that could make or break my future. I have to be an adult for once with no help from Mommy or Daddy. This hasn’t always been my biggest fear, though it has come into mind in my pre-teenage years. As the surroundings in my life change, my feelings follow suit. Things like monsters hiding in my closet were my fears as a child. Then it progressed to monsters staring in movies: Chucky, Freddy Kruger, the Crypt-Keeper. When I reached my pre-teen years, my predominant concern was of getting a boyfriend and all the other typical junior high topics of discussion. Now, though, in high school, I am unsure if it is the SAT/career thing that scares me, or is it that all teenagers are fearless? This is what is said, but if so then why do I feel this way? It is possible that there is a balance of each. Yes, let’s go with that. A perfect balance.
Basically, I answered the “what did you fear the most when you were little” question above. I was afraid of scary movies, the dark, basically, monsters. Honestly, I never fully overcame it. I mean, I think with age comes maturity and the capability to understand that monsters aren’t real, but every once in a while- that feeling of the little girl cowering under her blankets- flickers on. It is a faint fear, but I will admit, it’s there. I also sort of answered the why question above as well. It all has to do with self doubt, imagination, and personal experience. If you see a movie with a monster, hiding out in a dark closet, well odds are that your 4 year old self will sleep with a night light. Nowadays I have these rational (I guess) fears all do to self-doubt. I also would rather fear something and have it not come true, than never think twice about it and having it happen to me.
As for how often do I let fear stop me from doing what I want to do…well no TOO often. I will admit that it happens though. I can’t really think of a good example, but yes. I definitely regret it when it’s all over. I think that fear can be a good thing, even if it holds you back sometimes. If I had not overcome my fear to meet other visually impaired kids, who would I be today? There’d be no Jake (my boyfriend), Melissa (bff), or Karan (bgf). The choices people male, even the tiniest ones, define their life. Fear is good and bad at the same time. I guess you just have to learn o manage fear in a way that pleases you.
Where on earth would anyone even encounter a demonic llama? I must find such a place and head out! Perhaps there will be a sale...and some goats.
Wow. I don’t know who Mary Manin Morrissey is, but I love her for saying that quote. If you are too scared to go through the brick walls that stand before you on your journey to your dreams, fear has taken over. Your faith is the belief in yourself that you can do anything you set your mind to, and once the fears, the doubts, creep into your mind, you won’t be the best that you can be. To me, that is what the quote is saying to me.
Right now, my biggest fear is being alone. More specifically, that I will wake up tomorrow, and my mom won’t be there to comfort me. Losing my mom, the one person that I love with my WHOLE heart, is my biggest fear. It may seem cliché, but my mom is the only person I can truly trust. When I am having a bad day, or even a good day, coming home to her hugs makes me feel a sense of love that I can never match. I talk to her every day, even though I may not tell her everything, she seems to know everything, and comforts me in every way possible. I think that this is has always been my biggest fear. When my parents would go on vacation for weeks at a time, I would cry. I would sleep in their bed, wishing that they would come home immediately. Even though I had my sisters and brother with me, which was enough to keep me entertained forever, I felt alone. A child has a bond with their parents that can’t be created with any other person. I always fear losing my family and the ones that I care most about. I couldn’t imagine not having the support group and the ones that I truly love with me. My mom always tells me the stories of how her mother died when she was so young, and she never got the bond that she wished she had. The sadness that is in my mom’s voice when she tells the stories of her mother scares me; I don’t want to lose the bond with my mom. I know that everyone with eventually die. But I want my mom to see my success, see me graduate from college, and see me start my family. So because of what my mom went through, not having that bond, I fear losing my family, and being alone.
When I say I am afraid of being alone, I don’t mean being alone in a relationship standpoint. I don’t want to be alone and without the people that I care about, because that would truly devastate me. I don’t think that I will ever lose this fear, nor do I want to. This fear drives my love and appreciation for the ones that care for me. And it makes me realize how lucky I am to have the support and guidance from the amazing people around me.
I was talking about this today, how I often stop and think about losing my family. That person said that it was a pessimistic way to look at life, but I don’t see it that way. It is a realistic way of living. I know someday that the ones that I care for will die, but my fear is that they will die sooner than they should. I don’t regret thinking this way, because I don’t dwell on it. And often I brush off the topic, knowing that thinking about it for too long isn’t healthy. But it makes me realize how lucky I am to have everything that god gave me.
I often feel that fear is a good thing. It gets your adrenaline rushing, and you can’t help but feel excited during a time where you are scared. I think that if you get to the point that you are paranoid about everything, you have a low self-confidence, and you fear everything around you. But other than that, I think a bit of fear is healthy. It drives you to do better and work harder. So I will always fear some things in life, but I know that I will push myself to that next level just to avoid what I fear.
My biggest fear in life is to lose people. Throughout life they say that people come and go, but in my view I don’t want someone to come into my life unless I want them to stay there. I’m the type of person that believes in fate, and not in coincidence. So when I come across something in life, I look at its trends and compare it to other things that have happened in my life. The only way I can explain this is when my friend Chris moved away to South Carolina. Being devastated as a typical girl would, sometime later I lost touch with another one of my friends. And at that moment I decided that I would try my best not to lose touch with people. More specifically, I looked at the people around me, and promised myself that I would never lose certain key people in my life such as my best friend Alyssa, or my sisters, or even God. (I know that getting rid of God is very impossible, but like said, it’s my biggest fear and, well, who knows.) So from there on out, until this day I struggle and analyze my actions so that I might grow closer to people and not draw away from them. I’ve always wanted to get over this fear, so that I might be free and open with many people around me, but because of this fear, I only have this connection with few people, and they’re the ones I fear to lose the most. The event that I’m about to divulge on is one of those experiences that flash through my mind from time to time, which we all have, for some odd reason. I assume this means it was something influencing, if it would leave such an impression in my head. One night when I was maybe in 3rd or 4th grade, I just thought about where I was going to go when I was all grown up. Being a very deep thought, for such a young girl, all I could think about was my older sister leaving my family and me to go to school, and then fast forward to all of my sisters and even me leaving my parents to have our own lives. This means I wouldn’t live with my parents! That shocking idea then is now considered a luxury, but nonetheless I sadly pictured myself with no family and some other life, some completely unfamiliar and detached life. That night I cried a very, very long time until my dad heard me and came in and told me these things would never happen, which is a lie that I am happy to hear any day. I never actually linked these two ideas of being alone together, but the only reason I can think of why losing somebody is my fear is explained in a very general statement: everybody is afraid of losing people. In fact, I believe that people live their lives to search for people to enjoy life with. Not always in the romantic idea, but more that we yearn to find someone who finds humor in what we find humorous, someone who finds it interesting in what only we find interesting, and someone who agrees with the things that we agree with. We all want someone who complements our life, and makes life that much better. And to lose such joy is something we should all fear. But sometimes I wonder if having this fear prevents me from meeting, opening up to, or having relationships with these people who could potentially harmonize our lives. I’m afraid that in keeping my secured friends in, that I’m keeping others out. This makes me once again miss out on great people. And on one hand I don’t think that there’s any way we ourselves can cure this human condition, but on the other hand, I believe that through the people around us we can cure this condition. Like said before, we yearn to find people who liberate us and know us inside and out, so in parallel to this statement I think that only certain people can bring this essence out of us, and that we can’t make ourselves have this connection with just anyone. So I guess you could say that we as humans, and more particularly me, will never fully overcome this. But without a doubt there is a few out there that can allow us to overcome this condition.
I generally try to not let fear dictate my decisions in life, because you will never know the outcome of what something is unless you take up the opportunity to do it. More clearly, we fear what will become the outcome of our decisions, but without taking the chance of making a decision there will never be any outcome. Sometimes I fear what would happen if I told a specific person how I felt about him, (;D), but the little attempts that I have made in the past allow me to feel that there will not be a good outcome. But beyond this, although in situations similar to this, I always wonder what if I ‘said this’ or ‘did that’, that these actions that I carry out might change the outcomes of how situations work out, but ultimately I guess it’s something we’ll never know. To prove this train of thought, watch me the next time I miss the next big home football game, or miss out on that dinner party. I freak out on the petty, teenage opportunities that could have taken place. My loss I guess, but I actually don’t ever think there is an appropriate time to let fear overcome your feelings or actions. Besides the obvious roller-coasters, or Haunted Walks that you might expose yourself to, fear shouldn’t tell someone what they can or cannot do. Fear is just this tiny little voice that makes us think the worst of something, but if we believed this voice and thought the worst of everything, there would be nothing in life to take chances or opportunities on because we would already assume that everything in life would be even worse than the next.
Well first of all I have to say that Mary Manin Morrissey is probably the best name I’ve ever heard, you know...ever. But just because she has the best name doesn't mean her quote is up to par. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. My interpretation of the quote is that apparently Mary Bo Peep thinks that your dreams are only ascertainable if you have faith in yourself and what you are doing. Secondly it says that if you are afraid that you can't accomplish your dream, your fear of not achieving it will be the thing that stops you. First of all I think this quote deserves a counter quote, and since it addresses two separate issues I’ll be providing two counter quotes. The first is "Dreams are like rainbows. Only idiots chase them." and the second "Fear. Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore, you will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea." I give credit for both of those quotes to despair Inc. Now back onto Mary Bo's quote, I don't really believe in dreams. Dreams are usually an individual’s picture of a perfect situation, action, thing or whatever that they want to obtain. And it is my personal belief that just wishing for something has a tendency to make people extremely lazy as they just expect their dreams to come true. It's the same as wishing, and speaking of wishing here’s another wonderful quote, "When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it's really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. Then you're pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it's death by meteor" The truth in that statement is unbounded. Dreams and wishes are for the people who are too lazy to actually go out and just get the job done. For me there is no hoping or wishing there is only doing. You go out and do what you have to and then the day ends. I don't mean to put down those dreamers and wishers, but I like a more concrete way of accomplishing things.
My biggest fear for some time now has been pain, pure and simple. It's the gut wrenching sickening pain of long distance running. It's worse than exhaustion and worse than physical injury, it is a combination of physical and mental retaliation against your willpower to keep on going, a point where you body shuts down against you. And that’s where the pain begins as a struggle for control over your own actions. A cataclysmic battle between what your heart wants to do and what your body refuses to do. I’m not trying to glorify what I do or over dramatize it but that is the truth, any runner will tell you. The only sport that your are afraid of. It’s pain I’ve never felt in soccer, swimming, wrestling or anything similar. This however has not always been my biggest fear. The most monumental, excruciatingly scary thing in my life was a simple two letters, E.T. OH MY FRICKIN' GOD was E.T. the scariest thing I had ever seen. I had nightmares about E.T. for years and when I’d finally gotten over it in 1999 the car company Saturn came out with a commercial featuring E.T. looking at a new car and the quote was "it's out of this world." ARE YOU HAPPY SATURN!!?? When I was finally at peace with myself you had to blow a hole through my world, didn't you? And you know what? No one buys your cars anyway so my mental scaring was for naught! Sadly my fear of E.T. never subsided....I still hate watching that movie. Although I’m not so much afraid anymore as I would cut his fat head off that toothpick neck if I ever saw that fool in person. The earth would taste his alien blood and his pelt would hang over my fireplace. I can offer no explanation though as to why I hate that little freak so much. All I remember is seeing that movie when I was four years old and screaming every time his scrawny neck extended. Subliminally I always thought he appear in my toy chest or pop out from around the corner....or be hiding in my imaginary corn fields. My current fear is easier to explain. It's a simple pattern of learned behavior; pain equals bad, running equals pain therefore running equals bad. But for some reason I’m an addicted idiot who can't stop going through this pain. Running is not my antidrug like those thousands of cliché posters state, it is my torture and abuser, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I’ve never been stopped from doing something I wanted by fear. When I was little and it came too things like talking to girls or doing dares at your friend’s 10th birthday party I always felt compelled to do what I needed to. Peer pressure or not I didn’t let fear get in the way of what I wanted to do. In fact my plans for life are to go out and do some of the most thrilling (what others call fear) things that life has to offer. I want to go sky diving, bungee jumping, deep sea diving and even running the bulls in Madrid. There are too many great experiences that life can offer for you to be cooped up by fear.
Although fear can be preventative I think it’s one of the most useful emotions that we have because fear is a force that gets things done. There an old African running proverb that goes,” Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running” while it may not be the most eloquent aphorism it brings about too good points, that nature is driven by the fear of survival and that you run faster when you are scared. Now the second only applies to runners, nevertheless its shape can be changed to fit any situation. If you want an example just look at the average student, why do they study for tests and try to succeed? They are afraid of failing and afraid of the disappointment of their parents or not reaching their goals. Contrary to what Mary Bo said, fear is not an inhibiting emotion but one that can power you to achieve your goals.
In response to Dan P:
Wow Dan I never knew you had this hidden competitive drive to beat your sister. You should use it to fuel your sports and then people won’t take you “to the cleaner’s” in athletics anymore. But I have to say I disagree on your last statement about how fear keeps you rational under stressful situations such as charging into a room full of zombies. From my experience fear, if anything, messes up your perception and causes you to perform the wrong actions. If I’m pvping on my druid in arathi basin, I usually start freaking out when a rogue stun locks me, but if I keep my cool and pay attention I can usually break off with a combination of barkskin, stun and roots. But anyway I can understand your point if your are associating fear to an adrenaline rush brought on by fear that increases your perception, speed and strength, but on the mental scale fear takes you down to an animalistic level where you only seek to achieve your short sighted goals.
“You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith." I think that quote says a lot and is very personal to many. To sum it up, it means to never let fear get in the way of your dreams and never let it hinder your future possibilities. There are people everyday whose fears stop them from reaching the best of their possibilities. One of my friends who is older like college age is limiting herself from performing to the best of her abilities because she doesn’t want to leave home. I can see her moving to New York or Los Angeles and starting her own business that one day would be a multi-million dollar success, but she doesn’t want to do something that far away from her friends and family because she has a great fear of losing them. So now she is getting her teaching degree and living in South Jersey with her high school sweethearts, friends from high school, and parent living right around the corner. She has so much potential but she is scared to move on with her life. She is scared to grow up and be independent, and it is disabling her from living her life to the fullest she could live it to.
At this present moment my biggest fear is the future. Two hours ago my mom forced me to go see a presentation at Oak about college admissions or something. Oh my goshhhh! Talk about giving me anxiety?! It just hit me that in a year from now I should know where I want to go to college and I have to fill out massive amounts of paper work and compare schools, visit schools, and do research to find that perfect university. That idea seems so daunting I toyed with the idea of giving up my dreams of being a broadcaster on some big news station and just go to ACCC or something. I don’t think my mom would be really happy about me giving up my dreams though and that quote above really inspired me and lifted my spirits. I know that even though it will be hard and I am scared out of my mind, I just gotta suck it up and do it. I have a tendency to have a lackadaisical attitude sometimes and college searching does not leave time for that nonsense. I am terrified of the question “Where will you be in ten years?” because I have no idea and I don’t know where to start on the journey to answer this question. I want to make something of my life and I need to start getting on that. It makes me nervous to think that I have to make these life altering decisions based on my own preference because to those who know me well enough know I am the WORST decision maker. I can never make up my mind and try to put that off as much as possible. I know that in the future, there will be no time for that and I will need to step it up a notch if I want to succeed in life. I want to get really motivated and focused on this task so that I don’t regret the choices I make. It would be so much easier to just think about doing what the person I described above did and consider that as a career path, but I know that I can do so much better and go farther in life. I want to travel and see places before I settle down with a family.
When I was younger my fears played mind games with me, like if I heard a noise I would assume it was a monster in my closet or a burglar under my bed. Though above all other fears as a child, the most intense was my fear of getting kidnapped. It was always in the back of my head and I was scared to be without my mom and dad for awhile. I didn’t like to play out front in the yard as much if there was not an adult present. I think my parents pressed it in my head that I needed to be scared of kidnappers and it worked. If an adult looked at me wrong I assumed their mission was to kidnap me. Okay maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, but I was really scared of that. It was one of those thoughts that kept me up at night thinking like what would I do if I was abducted? I stopped thinking about it as much as I grew older because I just had other things to worry about. It just doesn’t seem as likely to happen now that I am sixteen though if someone was to try and abduct me, there isn’t much I could do about it? I mean I would put up a fight don’t get me wrong, but the odds of me getting kidnapped tomorrow are not that high (knock on wood!).
I think fear is good to feel over certain things like doing drugs and drinking and driving because it prevents you from doing something that is potentially harmful. Also like being scared of abduction, it makes you think a little bit more before doing things, for example walking home from a friend’s house late at night just doesn’t sound very safe. Though fear could give you something to think over, I think that it is just important to not let it interfere with how you are living your life. Don’t live in constant fear that a boy you like doesn’t like you or that you are nervous to go that far away for college because that prevents you from living life the way you want to. Don’t limit yourselves just because of something you fear.
Lindsey I understand your fear of rejection. I think it is a common fear to most people, but DON’T let that stop you from being who you are. The other day my friend told me this really great quote. It is something along the lines of “The goal is not to live forever but to create something that will.” Go ahead and be yourself and create a memory or ideal or name for yourself that never dies.
Devon-
First of all, I remember that day when you rode your bike to Mae’s. And I was so scared, I couldn’t have imagine what you were feeling. (But the cop was really nice!) And I think you did a really amazing thing to call the cops, because that guy was a totally creeper.
“I feel as though I am so afraid of loss for a few different reasons. I have this thing where I am really sensitive to emotions. I tend to think that even inanimate objects have feelings of some sort.”
Darling,I feel you on the emotion deal. And I always feel bad when hurt something, like when a doll falls on the floor, sadness overcomes me. I feel the need to take this doll, and kiss it where it got hurt. Although it’s obvious that this doll can’t feel anything, I don’t like that I hurt that doll in anyway.
Matt-
We have had this conversation before. I fear swimming certain races. (400 IM, THE MILE.)Running isn’t the only sport you fear before you do it.
Mary Manin Morrissey wasn't revealing a massive revelation onto the world with her quote. She wasn't even stating something common people aren't aware of. She was just stating the fact that when you begin doubting your success of your dream, that doubt, which then becomes a fear, will choke the life out of your dream if you allow it surpass your belief in your success. Everyone obviously knows this already though. Its been drilled into people's head since the ability to acknowledge dreams. "Don't ever doubt yourself or your dreams!" I'm sure everyone has heard that or some variation of it in their lives, and Morrissey is just explaining it in a more philosophical way. Shes explaining how the doubt, or fear of failure, of success when it is piled up is the inadvertent cause of failure to achieve a dream.
I know this sounds like cliche or like I'm trying to be a tough guy or any of that malarkey (yeah I know kicking it old school), but I'm honestly not afraid of really anything. The only thing that scares me besides people like saying boo, which I must say is a normal human reaction to a sudden change in a situation or reality, are spiders. I'm not afraid of death, rejection, being alone, someone close dying, rapist, losing my intelligence, or anything else that seems to be one of these deep rooted fears the most people have. Death doesn't scare me because its something that's going to happen to every single person, and to fear death is only fearing the inevitable blackness that will pervade your mind. It's pointless to be afraid of something that is gonna happen regardless of your feelings, beliefs, or actions. Moving on, I don't fear rejection because anyone who really pays close attention to me sees its something that happens quite often. How can you fear something that happens to you so many times it just has become a part of a cycle? Being alone is something I really could careless about, because growing up as a child whose older siblings are grown already and out of the house is a quick way to find amusement by your self. Plus, I can play madden alone so I can't go wrong if I'm ever stuck being alone. Also my lifestyle now and desired future is extremely independent and needs no outside person or person's input to make me happy. This doesn't mean I don't appreciate my friends because they do make my life quite eventful. Like I've said before death is not something that I fear, so even if I will be pained by the loss of a loved one, I don't fear it. It will eventually happen and its something I must accept in order to continue life, despite how much it will hurt. In case your wondering, just because something hurts you emotionally doesn't mean you feared it or anything of the sort, considering you can be hurt emotionally and it not be because you were afraid of something happening. It just happened to happen at an unexpected time causing the emotional distress. Rapist are probably the last thing I'd ever fear at this point in my life. I'd fight to the death if someone tried to rape me, and then it doesn't matter if they succeed because I'm dead. Losing my intelligence isn't so much as a fear, but more of a possibility that I refuse to allow to happen. There's no limit on my brain telling me how much I can learn, so if anything starts slipping it just means I have to work harder and restock my mental shelves with the lost information. Intelligence may be the only thing I truly have, but it doesn't make me fear losing it, but on the contrary just makes me cherish it as a gift more.
My fear of spiders has always been prevalent throughout my life but there were times in my past when I feared a few things. I feared ghosts and my mother dying for the longest time. Ghost were just enigmas to me, and at a young age, and even an old age for some, that which is unknown is feared. So it always scared me to think about the possibility of someone crossing the realm of the living from the realm of the dead and walking again. It didn't help that I played zombie video games fueling my belief that it was even possible for this to happen. If a person could come back and be impervious to human attempts to harm them, but they could harm humans made me extremely scared. My mother dying was a completely different situation though. I feared it due to the fact that my mother is older than most peoples mother, and even some peoples grandmothers, and she was my everything as a child. I had no one else in my life and if I lost my mother i thought for sure my life would end. As i reached about thirteen years old though, I realized ghosts are an impossibility due to the creation of this world for me, and my mother regardless of how I feel about it is going to die eventually. I do not fear these things anymore but I accept them, releasing them from the prospect of fear.
Spiders are just a different story and scenario all together. I hate them and fear them at the same time. Lets put it into prospective in case some people don't understand it. If I turned around and a gigantic spider was on my TV I would scream like a little school girl, but if I turned around and I thought I saw a ghost I would jump then double take and acknowledge my entire religious belief is false and the world does not exist for my life. Seeing a ghost isn't scary its a life revelation for me so I actually welcome seeing a ghost, so it can prove me wrong and a separate religion right. Although no matter what I believe spiders are real, fuzzy, and creepy crawly. They have those eight beady eyes that stare glossy at you, while poison drips from their fangs and hisses come from them. Their thorax holds webs that can trap you into a oblivion of fear until your eyes bulged from their sockets. Nothing about the site of a spider is welcoming, and even the thought of their presence makes my skin crawl and my hair stand on end. I have no true explanation of why spiders scare me, except for their utter awkward and dangerous insectoid appearances. People have two legs, animals have four, and spiders double what a vicious animal has creating a unfamiliar shape to the eyes. Its almost as if their unfamiliarity causes people to fear the unknown abilities of a spider and its utterly creepy look it has. Also they have an innate ability to cause fear in a person, considering it is probably one of the most widespread fears in the world.
Actually this may sound like I'm attacking those with fear, but I'm most definitely not. I don't change my actions due to fear, because I have nothing to fear. I change my actions due to deductive reasoning. If I fight someone because they bumped into me I'm going to get kicked off the football team and suspended, which ultimately hurts my athleticism and intelligence. The kid doesn't scare me, I just know the consequences are not what I want to experience so I don't do the action. If I fall asleep in class, I know the teacher will be upset and yell, so to save me time and the teacher a voice I decided not to sleep. I'm not afraid of the teacher yelling, I just acknowledge the eventual consequences and alter my actions to them. To put it in the positive consequence perspective, if there were a million dollars laying in a pile in the middle of the floor and the class had to run to get it, I wouldn't run because I fear not having a million dollars. I'd run because I know that if I get the "millie", as Lil' Wayne calls, it, I can spend it on whatever I want. Also I don't not kill people yet because of some fear of the law, I do it because the consequence of killing someone without a "License to Kill" happens to be prison and I have plans for my life.
Most of the time I really don't regret not doing something due to my ability to reason the consequences, but sometimes I do. For instance, sometimes I think should just forget my reasoning and barrel forth with the consequences in lieu of the actions. This occurs in instances of stupid people in the hallway or people belching uninspired comments of knowledge that are said for no reason except to try to flaunt their knowledge. When these occur I damn myself for my intelligence of the consequences and my reserve to not waste time with the consequences, because at those moments I'd love to smash my fist across an idiots head in the hallway for being an idiot over something so stupid, or loose an arrow into a particularly belching-information-type person (inside joke for all the kids in the left side of Cervi's second period class). A lot of the time though I just move on with my life and give the bypassed consequences very little thought.
Fear can be a great thing to feel if its used the right way. It is an enthralling emotion that courses through the veins and brings the best out in people. If you want to know the true character of a person make their fear intensify by one hundred fold, and then see how they react. The Joker from the Dark Night explains it well when he depicts how people act when they are just about to die. Tyler Durden masterfully exemplifies this when he forces people to react to his ways of "terrorism". I actually did an entire essay on fear last year in response to Emerson's Self-Reliance piece as an assignment from Mr. Costal. The aspect and emotion of fear can be a marvelous thing if used in correct situations as it can be noted due to the fact it brings out the true nature and inner being of a person.
In response to Jen's response to Jon's response to Jen's comment
Even though this point I'm gonna bring up has nothing to do with fear, I still feel like I should say something. You make a lot of sense when you say why should you go through the torture of dating a person when you know your not going to end up with them, but I guess someone could argue its the risk. It is quite stupid to date at all unless you know for sure someone's the one, but you don't just look at people and say "yo that's the one." If that was the case dating wouldn't happen, people would have casual sex all over the place, and then eventually they'd see the one and be like "viola." So, you see you can't just denounce the whole prospect of dating, or else you'd never fall in love unless you happen to be like one out of six hundred million and fall in love on sight. That is all.
In response to Lindsey
You can't live your life constantly in fear. If you do that your never really living, your just fearing. People have to learn to just throw their fear away and go against their emotions and risk things. Risk rejection, don't fear it. If people weren't capable of throwing caution to the wind against their fears America never would of been founded, more than half our Armed Forces wouldn't exist, and the Taliban would be unstoppable forces. You have to think of it as you are an unstoppable force and fear is a paper wall.If you don't you will end up with your fear being the Joker and your sense of living as the Batman in the quote by the Joker, "You just couldn't let me go could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible aren't you? You won't kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness, and I won't kill you, because you're just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever."
Its as if you don't start throwing caution to the wind and going against how you feel from fear you will be destined to forever be stuck in your predicament with no solution out of it.
"You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.”
Interpretation:
When your fear overwhelms your everyday life and functioning process it becomes a constant reminder that may eventually consume all of your time and energy. The fear wastes away all of your energy that could be well spent on dreaming and the main thing that keeps us going which is faith.
Many people have fears of irrational things, having a fear of such things means that you have a fear of things that do not really posses any threat to you. For example, fear of spiders, small enclosed spaces or large spaces are all irrational. Of course there is an exception to certain spiders and snakes. As a child I always had a fear of irrational things such as spiders, snakes, and my biggest fear was that no matter what kind of body of water that I was in that a shark would bite me. If I could not see through the water then I had the hardest time going into it. My brothers had always teased me and said that a shark was going to bite me. From the moment that the words came spilling out of their mouths I had a fear of going into certain bodies of water. My mom had told me time and time again that there were no sharks in lakes and yet I could not get passed it. I always needed to see where I was and to this day I have overcome that fear but I still feel uncomfortable in lakes and rivers. To be completely honest about my fear of things in bodies of water that are not clear, I still feel uncomfortable.
My fears have not always been the same. They are different from when I was a child in a sense that I have gained more knowledge, but my main fear of death began at the age of six or seven. I had been watching the news (keep in mind I am about 6) and I heard that a girl was stolen out her tent while camping. Her parents had been in a tent right next hers and it was in their backyard! Nevertheless, I slept in the bed once in a while with my parents until I was about 9 because I seriously thought that I was going to get stolen and killed. Things that I heard from the media and my piers affected me deeply and they are in a way a reason why I had and still do have fears.
I am a Necrophobia. I have always had a fear of death whether it is my death or others. I fear that one day I will wake up and my mom or dad will not be alive, I fear that one day my brothers will not wake up, and lastly I fear that one day after a long night of sleep I will not wake up. I have NEVER gone to bed mad at anyone in my family because I would not be able to live with myself if anything ever did happen to them and the last time I spoke to them I told them that I hated them. I NEVER say goodbye because I feel as though when you say goodbye you say it because you will never see someone again and that is never true to me, even if someone does dies I know that I will see them again in heaven. My fear of death has lead to some ridicules things that I do; in a way they are OCD. I can not sleep with my fan on because even though it is installed perfectly, I am afraid that it will fly off and chop my head off. I can not sleep with my windows open because I am afraid that someone will climb into my room and rape me (even though it is not possible considering the location of my room). I can not go to sleep if my bed is not maid because I have this thought stuck in my head that if I do go to sleep that someone will die that I love dearly. All of these things are silly to many people but to me they are just ways of dealing with my fear. We all have ways of dealing with our fears and sometimes we go out of our way to avoid an encounter with them. This way of avoiding our fears can stop of from living our lives. Once we let our fear take over our lives then we let it hold us back. The statement that I have heard many times before, “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” explains everything in my opinion.
I stop myself every night from going to bed with my bed not made. I stop myself all of the time to think of the consequences of my actions and how they will not only affect me but how they will affect my family and friends. I think about how no mother should ever have to experience a death of their child. Parents die before their children; it is just the way things are supposed to occur. No parent deserves that heartache and pain. I can say that I have stopped myself from doing things according to my fear of death. One instance that sticks very clear to my memory is when I could not go to bed if my room was not clean and it was and still is weird to me how I HAD to clean my room before bed. I had a friend over and it took time out of me hanging to out to clean my room, not because my mom had told me so but because my fear had told me so. I have my reasons as to why I HAVE to do these things and they are personal situations that occurred one time when I coincidentally did not make my bed. For some reason I can not help but blame myself and me not making my bed for what happened even though what happened had nothing to do with me. I regret all of the time not being able to get over this stupid problem and I know that eventually I will but it takes time just like anything else.
Fear can be a warning mechanism to the body. When we have a fear of something that will danger us, then we are more cautious to our surroundings. Our fears may save us from harmful situations. Constant fear that stops us from living our everyday lives is a fear that no one should experience. Fear can make your heart race like no other and may not “Feel” good but it is the adrenaline in fear that is just another human flaw. Since we are inferior to pain it is what creates out fears. All fear can be associated with pain which we try so hard to avoid experiencing.
Why are my post always so long?
Well, living in the middle of the woods here in East Jabip, one would think that I would be used to strange creatures and bugs. Frogs, toads, tree lizards, grasshoppers, squirrels, and crickets I could handle. Literally, I would pick them up (minus squirrels hahaha) because it wasn't a big deal to me. HOWEVER, when I was little, I had THE BIGGEST fear of arachnids. Oh my goodness. And of course, it seemed like they were everywhere because of the environment I was living in. I used to get chills down my spine and I froze. My mom tried to help me rid my fear by picking up daddy-long-leggers and saying, "Look Hil, they're harmless!" Which made me scream and refuse to come outside for another three hours. I know why I was afraid of spiders... they're impossibly still and downright creepy. I'm not sure when I came over my fear, or how. It was a gradual thing... now I can be in the same room with a spider and stare at it until it leaves. :) Ha ha. That's my only defense mechanism. I used to stop myself from doing whatever I was at the time (and still do sometimes...) and stare. Which can be inconvenient if I was doing something productive. Ha ha.
That was my biggest fear when I was little. On a more serious note...
I have one or two major fears. My religion has taught me to fear God and obey his commandments, which is fair, I think. I don't fear death, because it is something I have no control over and it is bound to happen someday. I don't fear what comes after death because I'm comfortable with my faith. However, I do have a fear of what this world is coming to. This fear developed somewhat recently, when I became more mature and intelligent of the world around me. I have a fear for the world and what it is coming to. Unfortunately, I believe that it will get a lot worse before it gets better. I hear every day in history class that the United States is on the brink of a depression. On the news, there are stories of war in Iraq and genocides in Darfur... it seems like the end isn't in sight, and improvements are slim to none. This fear never really hindered me in life, or stopped me from doing something that I wanted to do, since it developed so recently. I used to have a little bit of stage fright when I had piano recitals, but I overcame that as well. I've probably regretted not doing something that I wanted to some point in my life, but honestly, I can't think of a significant memory in which I can apply "fear" to it.
Fear is a good thing to feel. It keeps you humble. (WHICH IS A GOOD THING, JORDAN COLBERT! :)) Without fear, people would have no boundaries, no powerful force to stop them from running rampant. Whether it be a fear of God, or death, or the police, etc., it keeps humans in check and reminds them that they are not great and almighty.
Wow, I totally just got the "false evidence appearing real." Pfft. THis just goes to show that my brain is made of mush right now. Sorry for the lack of creativity. I had a really long day.
Jen--
Your blogs are always well-written and insightful. I appreciate that you are so honest. I think I have a small fear of love as well. It takes a lot for me to trust anyone, because a lot of the time, I'm let down whenever I decide to be honest. But, Jen... everyone is worthy of love. Don't let anything let you think otherwise. I respect you for thinking that you don't just want happiness handed over to you... "But if being in love would bring me happiness, I don’t want that. I want to work for it, not be given it." However, I think love is the hardest thing of all, above happiness. It's a feeling that doesn't just appear, and I think it's too complex for myself at the moment. I just hope you know that you are an amazing person with SO many talents. You deserve the BEST. :)
"You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith."
This quote simply means that if you allow your fears to stop you from doing something you want to, you are not living your life to the fullest. Everyone has fears and everyone has goals. It’s when you let these fears impede your ability to achieve these goals that you allow the fear to win. And that’s what it is, ALLOWING the fear to win.
At this point in my life my biggest fear is failure, both academic and athletic. Right before every test I take my only thought is, “I hope I don’t fail…” Even on tests I spend two hours studying for, which is a rare occurrence, and I know there is no possible way I could fail, I pray to the test taking gods that I will not fail. It’s the aftermath of a failed test that gets to me. The empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, the instant regret for not preparing myself properly, and the thought that I know I could have done better. I can’t stand these feelings, and as a result, I fear their occurrence. For an athletic event, it’s the same thing. Before every crew race, I sit on the starting line dreading its possible outcome. If we lose, I have to row back into the dock with my disappointed coach standing and staring at us. No congratulations, no celebration, just silence. I’m a competitive person, and when I lose it’s just the worst feeling in the world.
This fear of failure has not been instilled in me forever. It’s a recent fear that I’ve developed as I realized that failure at this level affects my future. A failed test lowers not only my biology grade, but the holy GPA. And as of this year, my GPA is something a college is going to eventually look at and judge my intelligence based off this little number. If I wasn’t going to college and didn’t want a good job, I really wouldn’t care about my GPA, but since it matters to them, it matters to me. When I was in grade and middle school, grades did not matter to me, but I didn’t have to worry much about my grades because grade school was easy as cheese.
When I was younger I had a terrible fear of aliens. I don’t know what exactly caused this fear, but I think it was a combination of the show X files and the movie Mars Attacks! I used to have nightmares every night and would wake up screaming for about 2 years, my parents loved it… I was terrified of them because I believed they were real. I was too young to convince myself of their nonexistence with logic, so when something like the roar of a plane’s engine went over my house, I would dream of an alien invasion of Earth, or an ominous figure opening my bedroom door and taking me to the mothership. Obviously as I matured the fear left me, and hopefully one day I’ll look back on my fear of failure and laugh at ITS immaturity.
I don’t have many fears, and it rarely stops me from doing anything with my life. I can’t remember an instance where I was so paralyzed by fear that I couldn’t follow through with something, or live my life as I would like. The only time fear stops me from acting is when I know I’m about to do something stupid, like having a sword fight with shovels or skipping with tremendous velocity. Fear is good when it’s an instinct, a natural reaction your body has to preserve itself. But other than that, I think we should all work towards overcoming our irrational fears.
I personally love this quote because it describes exactly how I feel most of the time and I try to explain how I feel to most people, but they just stare at me blankly as I rant my feelings. This occurred yesterday, twice. Most of the time we put up barriers and create obstacles due to fear. We want our dream, our aspiration, our wants to come true, but creating those emotional barriers hinders our faith and allows fear to shine. I feel that many times that fear is actually intimidation. I’ve always been so anti- relationships and getting close to people in general. I’m still that way; I allow others to perceive in conversation that I’m quite open about myself and to others. However, at the same time I don’t display my emotions and become extremely secretive especially when I’m upset, anxious, or even happy. Just like my appearance has always thrown people off. I remember my freshman year, I was talking to Andrew Cain about my classes and at that time I was taking all the honors classes like everyone else in this cohort. This kid that was friends with Andrew Cain, Bill Rementer, was astonished when he heard I was taking those classes. His words were, “ You’re in honors algebra 2 and honors geometry?” Then I responded. He proceeded, “Wow, I would never think you would take those, you look dumb.” I just giggled and passed it off, but inside I felt hurt because I never really fit into any particular category of people, which I’m happy about now because I can stand a lone and be content and find friends in a variety of people not just one type of person. Therefore, this quote just proves that we really should be freer with our emotions and less afraid like Nudists are with their physique.
Well after coming from Dr. Kesselman’s lecture, my biggest fear is college. I really want to go out west to Arizona State University and study Psychology. Although I am a “momma’s girl”, since my I lost my father. I’m literally connected to her hipbone and she is really my world. I’ve never been a way from home for more than a week and I’m not sure if I could be away from for months. Ultimately, I’m afraid of losing my relationship with my mom. At least, my mom now invested in texting so I can text her all the time now. I really don’t know how being away from my mother and going away to college all the way on the other side of the country will work out. I’m a strong believer in that you truly have to go away to college and isolate yourself from the environment you grew up in to understand yourself and learn who you are. This fear developed when high school came around.
Two fears existed in my little head when I was a wee one. Spiders terrified me. Tears would flow down my face even if it were only a picture of a spider. How they crawled, jumped, and spun on their webs always seemed really creepy to me. I never even had the courage to stomp one because I’d immediately call on someone else to do it. Now, I can stomp on the spiders. I’d never stomp on them with my own belongings because then spider’s guts would just ooze all over and that’s unpleasant. I overcame it by my mom constantly telling me that the spiders are more scared of you than we are of them, since we are larger. Secondly, as a child I would always have the same nightmare over and over again. That was me losing my mother and becoming an orphan. Losing my father at a young age was something I had to accept and move on from. Only having one parent left horrified me. What would I do if my mother died? Where would I live? How would I cope? Who would take care of me and comfort me? Were questions that always fogged up my mind. I still fear this possibility, but I’m older now and can take care of myself so it’s not a concern anymore. It was only a concern because as a child your almost hopeless, since you still are learning about life and your capabilities as a person.
I hardly stop myself anymore from doing things because of fear. With major decisions, I never do because I just fight through the insecurities or the scary realities of the situation. I’ll always be afraid of people. I’ll always be afraid of showing my true colors and I’ll never allow myself to be vulnerable. I really shouldn’t say always because even now I’m progressing with my boyfriend feeding him tidbits of my past life and allowing him to put the pieces together to understand how my thought process was derived. I guess I always felt that when people know your insecurities and know who you are, they are able to manipulate you leaving you to be entirely vulnerable. I rather observe the people around me and listen to their insecurities and dissect their character and be the manipulator. I just love psychology. The relationship I’m in now, Bruce allows me to be myself and he is slowly knocking down that brick wall I always establish with people. In past friendships with girls, I felt like I revealed myself and then the next day everyone knew my secrets. I just gave up on friendships with girls because it happened like three times with supposedly three best friends. I’m just done with cattiness. Therefore, I really don’t regret those experiences because they taught me to be weary and cautious with people. It slowly taught me that the only person you can truly trust is yourself. Fear is never a good thing to feel. Well, it depends on the person. If fear gives you that rush, anxiety, and ability to progress then it’s a good feeling that’ll help you accomplish. If fear only inhibits you from potential then it’s bad.
I believe the quote refers to almost a sure lack of confidence or pure fear based on a subject you are uneasy about. When people have dreams, they are going to have embedding thoughts in their mind. These thoughts can be sudden and uncommon or sometimes consistent, depending on each person. They fears of “ I won't be able to do such and such” or “Blah Blah is impossible and I will fail.” This fear in letting yourself down is always haunting people when they stare down their self-implicated task. I tend to do it constantly when it comes to sports or academics, but thankfully my confidence always seems to prevail.
It may also be to reference to an actual fear which disables you from accomplishing what you are confronted with in your journey. Lets use an extreme example for a moment: say you were planning to be a pilot. You can take the test, your confident in what your doing, you can even fly the plane. However, you are presented with a challenge when you find the only thing you can't do is handle the parachuting part of the test. The intensity and fear that strikes you by this task is just so overwhelming, you are incapable of becoming a pilot. In many cases, we are presented with a situation in which an actual fear can bring our journey to a halt.
I do glory myself on not having many fears that strike me. I managed to take on almost anything I've been presented in my life, including your extremes like death. However, certain things do penetrate my heart with such a blow as to change me completely, whether generally in attitude or turning pale from the incident.
My materialist fear, as I so call it, is roller coasters My mom has told me it really does not make sense to her; I'll be willing to take on more than seven pounds of fat slobs beating me up every play on the field, yet I can't even go on a roller coaster than toddlers may go on. I really believe that it's just a mix of a slight fear of heights and fear of an accident. This must have just been a fear I developed when I was younger because as long back as I can remember, I've always hated roller coasters. For the most parts heights is no longer an issue, but large amusement park rides leave me sickly thinking about them. Probably from stupid-ass movies like “Final Destination 3” where people die on roller coaster,s and events like that girl with her legs being chopped off. It just has always been a giant blow to my brave self as soon as I hear the roaring of those metal beast. It really doesn't make sense to me either, but I guess I'm going to just keep playing the line game when I go to Great Adventure with friends.
My other fear may be pretty ridiculous to some, but I take it on everyday in my mind. I'm afraid of not being able to accomplish my dreams of Naval and the military. The situation is rather odd, no doubt about that. I just am stricken down by the lighten bolt of discouragement that my dreams may be fried. This fear has a tendency of steaming-off into corresponding conflicts. For example, I may be nervous about getting hurt in a game, not because I'm so concerned about serious injury, but what that injury may do to my playing ability, further effecting my football chances of Naval. Another example would be I may be afraid that if I do something that will get me in trouble with the cops, I will be rejected from the strict school. This is an example of the good that can come out of the fear.
Now thats one of the good things about certain fears; you can stop yourself before you do something you'll regret later. My fear of getting in trouble because of Annapolis might be a proper implication of fear. The fear that I may not be accepted to the academy shapes my attitude to the positive side of how I make decisions. Fear can be harnessed in many ways besides this. We find many athletes, warriors, etc. concentrate this fear to improve their performance, sometimes turning it into anger. Fear has always been seen as a negative emotion which people try to avoid. I think those who know not how to overcome that fear, but how they may implicate it are using it correctly. Those who try not to at least harness that fear are failing themselves. Even in the unlikely situation of invoking fear into others can be used. It's a matter of control your state of mind.
Matt C-
I’m kind of surprised that your greatest fear is pain, especially pain in running. I know that whenever I’m running a race, I always wished that I were you cause it looked like running came so easy to you. I never actually knew you were afraid of the race or the pain that comes along with it. But I guess I can relate with you on the running. Though after reading your blog, I don’t think I push myself nearly as much as you do. That’s probably partially because I’m afraid of the pain because yes, it’s one of the most sickening pains. So this is another example of how fear stops me from doing what I want to do.
"A cataclysmic battle between what your heart wants to do and what your body refuses to do.”
-This is by far one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard. Well done.
SaraVP- “I fear that I will never get looked at and my dreams of playing in college will never be reached.”
For some reason, this line really intrigued me. I know your fear was originally the fear of failing, but this point made me think about the fear of never having your dreams come true. I think that’s another fear of mine too. I have dreams. I have goals. And if something got in away of them that would change my life completely. And that’s scary because I wouldn’t know where to go from there.
To Sara C.
I just want to say I have the exact same fear of shots that you do, and I want to be a doctor! I remember when i was a kid how traumatizing it was when I saw that needle, and I feel your pain, literally.
To Jon S.
Jon you're not alone with your worries about the future. I think about college almost everyday, what school i'm going to get into, what my major will be, and what i'm going to do with my life. It's a fear we all share, and it creates a lot of stress. But i like to think in the end, everything will somehow work out.
‘I've actually been having long long talks with my guidance counselors about this very subject. We analyze how much (and believe me it's a lot) my goals have changed since freshman year, and why. Right now, my biggest fear is the future. That's pretty much always been one of my top fears. To put it in perspective, I started studying for the SAT's in 4th grade because I was afraid I wouldn't get into college if I didn't get a 1600. (Don't worry, I grew tired of all that vocab by the end of 6th)’
-Jon S
I’m sorry Jon, but reading this actually made me think the opposite of where you were going with it. It sparked another fear of mine. It sparked my fear of not living life to the fullest extent. I’m not sure if the ultimate satisfaction out of life depends on a certain job, college, or paycheck. These are all great things to obtain, but what if were missing out on some of the best experiences in life in an effort to obtain these things. I guess it’s all your interpretation of success. Some people might say that getting you dream job is success. Some people might say being known or famous is success. Some people might say helping people and creating relief is success. How are we to know which route leads to the overall fulfillment of life. I’m not asking any one of you to answer this, but it’s something that I had to ask myself as I read all of these responses based on our not just SAT’s and our classes, but our futures!
‘For certain parts of my life, I felt really alone like I didn’t have anyone to really count on. And the thought of going through life feeling that way, feeling rejection, is scary. Not only that, I fear of getting rejected because I’m not enough. I’m scared that I’m not going to be pretty enough, or smart enough, or funny enough, or athletic enough.’
-Kelly Nygeeee
Kelly, I know exactly how you feel. Growing up, we’ve always had the same friends, went to the same places, and been around the same people. But I think the reason you and I specifically feel the same, is because in many circumstances you and I react and handle things differently than the way our friends would. As you know, we don’t partake in the same things our friends do, and although we accept our friends we don’t always accept what they do. All I can say is ‘I feel you’ haha, and that maybe it’s a good thing that we’ve separated ourselves in the way we have. Think about it this way, what if we followed some of our friends and chose not to do AP classes, and choose rather than exceeding above what’s expected of us, we just take part in the ‘same old, same old’ that we find our friends doing. (Use your imagination) I know for a fact that we would both be disappointed in ourselves for taking the road more traveled, and very hopeless in looking towards our futures. Although we’re not sure the decisions were making in the present day are right, they do provide us with a lot of broader opportunities to do the right things in life, rather than the few opportunities we’d receive for succumbing to the people around us. Hang in there; I think it’s a blessing to have good judgment, and I also believe that one day it will pay off.
To Devon:
"I was riding my bike around the corner one day to Maegan's and a man in a pick up truck drove by me. He was pretty creepy and it gave me a sinking feeling in my gut. Where I live, there aren't many houses or cars around...just trees and deer. So I just kept peddling, faster and faster. Before I realized what was even happening, he turned around and drove by me again. Oh god, I thought to myself. What the heck?! I picked up my phone and immediately called my mom, however she didn't answer. So, I called Maegan and made her stay on the phone with me until I reached her house. I was near tears. I have never peddled so hard, and I reached her driveway in record time. I was sweating, panting, shaking, over all scared to death. I got to her house and the man drove by her driveway just as I had pulled in. When I got inside, I called the police, and as I was looking out her window I saw him circling around the development. Totally creepy. The cops came, and everything ended okay. However, fear saved me. That adrenaline rush allowed me to reach Maegan's house just in the nick of time. I'm convinced he was after me, and I will never ride around by myself again."
Wow. That exact same situation happened to me before, but I live on rt. 40 and I was always told not to ride my bike or even walk on the highway because of those reasons. I never listened because I loved the feeling of riding a bike on asphalt. That sinking feeling is by far the worst feeling in the world and it surely signals a bad situation approaching. I never really thought how fear could produce adrenaline in an awful situation like that, but thank goodness you made it to Maegan's house.
From one of my all-time favorite movies, I distinctly remember the quote, “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” This quote automatically appears in my mind when I read Morrissey’s quote. Both, in my option, have a pretty similar meaning. When you let fear convince you not to go after what you want, you’re blocking yourself from achieving your dreams. Basically, don’t let your fears stand in the way of your desires. Fear is just an obstacle of our goals. It takes true faith and courage to break down those barriers.
My biggest fear changes every so often, because I am unfortunately afraid of many, many things. I don’t watch any of those ‘Saw’ or ‘Hostile’ movies because I have nightmares. Not even just for that night. Sometimes for a week or two. I wish I was kidding. My biggest fear, as of the moment, would be the future. It encompasses all of my biggest fears into one, simple sentence. I don’t merely have just one. My fears of the future extend from the vocabulary quiz tomorrow to how I’m going to die. Will those I opened up to betray my trust? Will I succeed in life? Will I be happy? Am I going to be alone? Will I have a thriving job and be able to support a family? On that note, I wonder if I will even have a family. These questions constantly swim throughout my thoughts, and to my disappointment, I just don’t know the answers. I think that’s what scares me the most…not knowing what’s to come. It’s a frightening thought. I feel that everyone my age is afraid of the future. We all want to go to a good college, get a good job, and have a good life. Pressure from my life at home triggers my fear of the future. My parents expect the world out of me, and I’m afraid my future won’t satisfy them. We all have that belief that we’ll be able to achieve a successful life, but I know the doubts still linger in the back of our minds.
I distinctly remember being afraid of wolves when I was younger. I asked both of my parents, hoping to find a more plausible fear, but they both told me the same. So, for some reason, I was deeply afraid of wolves or, as I called them, ‘wolfs.’ The movie ‘Peter and the Wolf’ and the ‘Goosebumps’ series were the central causes of my fear. ‘Goosebumps’ scared the hell out of me. I still remember one scene in the movie where it was filmed from the wolf’s point of view as he’s attacking something (a lamb I believe?) and snarling violently. I had an abundance of nightmares about wolves. Upon waking up in the middle of the night after dreaming of wolves, I would race to my parents’ room and snuggle between them, feeling protected from my nightmares once I was in the safety of their arms. I finally overcame my fear when I was around seven years old. My curiosity began to extend to different things other than wolves, and I found myself forgetting about my fear. I just outgrew my fear, to put it simply.
Public speaking and rejection can be added onto my already extensive list of fears. Thus, I don’t like to voice my opinion in front of people I only want to impress. I don’t want them to dislike me for my opinion, and I don’t like to be wrong either. It’s embarrassing to me, and I frankly am not embarrassed easily. I sometimes regret not publicly speaking, but if I don’t let others know my thoughts and opinion, they won’t reject me. Like Tarah and Lindsey, I am a people pleaser. Being disliked by someone really irks me to no end. I mean, I know not everyone is going to like me, but still, if I had no prior problem with that person, it really offends me. Thus I really cannot say I regret not doing something I wanted because of fear. Sometimes, what people want to do isn’t such a good thing, so having few can be a good thing. Fear is one of the few motives society has to keep us morally right. Our fears stop us from doing things that we know are wrong. Our fears can be considered like our conscience. Say, for examples, you are told to steal something. You fear getting caught and the consequences, so you decide not to do it. Fear can also be beneficial in that our achievements wouldn’t be as significant in our lives if we didn’t have fear to overcome.
To Mae:
Once again you provide a a unique and really insightful view on the subjecy and i couldn't help but agree with you on why you diasgreed with the quote. Very well said.
To Sarah C:
Yes, it was originally done by elvis but I wasn't listening to that verson.
To All: Unforuntaely i can't comment much more tonight becuase i am on so many painkillers becuase of the infussion i just had that i can barely stay awke to type this. I know it is heart-beaking but you'll all live. HAHA, yea, i am sure you are actually celebrating saying thank goodness, he finally shut up. You know what, i agree.
In Response to Eric N:
“Fear can be a great thing, because overcoming it is one of the most difficult things to do. But for those who are able to defeat their fears, it strengthens them and molds them into the person they are meant to become.”
I thought that what you wrote was very insightful and the last statement was great. I t was a really strong point to end on and I agree 10o percent. I wish that I had thought of what you wrote. Fears only make our character stronger and we learn life lessons that can strengthen us.
Once last thing:
Devon i remember the creepy man. that truthfully was one of the scariest moments ever! Oh, yea, and he was looking for a refrigerator, ok...likely story. But seriously, i was scared for you. You are right ,and Bunje, always trust your gut!
that's all for tonight
Is it the unknown we all seem to be afraid of, or the uncontrolable?
For me, it would be not knowing if the object is controlable or not. Once that is resolved, it can be put in the catigory of "useful/interesting" "Uninteresting" or "To be avoided because it is uncontrolable and dangerous."
Make sense?
Oh, and Sarah, I personaly am not part of the hive mind. But that doesn't disprove your theory. Can you picture the daft things people would do if they had my mind running through them. Call out scraps of poetry at random momments, and sit there thinking until they deside that truth is "Granular, abrasive, luminous, and opaque."
(Yes, I am dieing to be asked what that is supposed to mean. But I won't explain until then, because it's kinda weird.)
Hey Sara, nice quote in the beginning of your blog. I seriously thought of the same one, as i put it in the beginning of my blog, too.
And Billy, rollercoasters?! I would have never expected that, but everyone's got their fears, so it's brave of you to even come out and say that. :)
Jen, i really found your blog interesting, but i have to agree with Jon on the matter. Do you really want to remember high school as a time you never gave a boy a chance? Break-ups and heartbreak are keys to our maturity, and i feel that it's just necessary to experience these things. Even though you probably disagree, you may have a shorter amount of time than you think.
Contrary to what my gut tells me, I agree with Sarah. Like I said, I'm defined by loyalties, so I completely understand the fear that I'll be gone and no one will care. And also, Sarah, I'll remember you for being weird if you return the favor. Deal?
And to Sergei... Wow. I had no idea... But! With all that crap you've had to suffer through, you'll shine all the brighter when (not if) you do succeed. And also. Wow. Fear of bikes. I would make fun of you if I didn't cringe at everything moving in my peripherals at the moment. As it is, moving objects in general is scary.
And to Eva, I demand that you explain your comment on truth right this instant. Your mind is intriguing. S'like a clam. You're suspicious of what's inside until you pry it open and see the diamond. Then you're all like... "awesome" But yeah. Explain the granular truth concept
At first glance, I would say my biggest fear is either losing a close relative or failing at life, but a deeper look reveals that I truly fear things that I don’t control. The control over the remote control, I don’t fear so much. Looking face to face with a wild dog that wants to sink its teeth into my jugular, I’m not that afraid of that. I can use my talents and my intelligence to get me out of that situation. When I think of a scenario where I come home from school and someone appears at my house to tell me that my parents have been in a horrible car accident, or the thought of me being 30, a college dropout, living at home that is what makes me have nightmares at night. This fear has been the same since I can remember. The first nightmare I remember, I was when I was about six and I was home from school sick. I fell asleep on the couch, and I was thrown into an alternate reality. They always begin happily; it was a welcoming day sitting around the house watching people walk about who came to the party. A person walks to my dad and they exchange words, I cannot hear them because they are outside. Suddenly my father is skewered by a roll of aluminum foil. More people join the fight until it is like a street brawl, by father bleeding profusely trying to fight his way along. I yell and bang on the window, but no one could hear me. I sat up in a cold sweat wondering where I was. Everyone is safe, thank God. Everyone has the fear of losing someone close imbedded in their DNA. We all have a connection to the people who we grew up with. To live without them is hard to imagine, and it is generally human nature, to fear what we don’t understand.
Fear limits everyone, regardless of who or where they are. What is to tell someone that it is not a good idea to jump off the Empire State Building? The fear of hitting the ground, the fear of the unknown, the fear of death. I stop myself from doing things that endanger my life or limb. To prove yourself by jumping off a roof is not something I would like to be known for, and I would be injured. I don’t regret the informed decision. I do, however, love the feeling of laughing at the person who is lying on the ground crying because they were stupid enough to jump off the roof. Fear is necessary to make those intelligent decisions. If it wasn’t for fear someone wouldn’t even realize you were putting their life at risk because that person wouldn’t even know that they should think about it. If given a choice of if I could life with fear or without, I would choose with, because I’m afraid of what might happen if I didn’t have it.
well molly i'm pretty sure i'd have a better perspective of that since i play both sports while you only know one side of the arguement.
Why do we allow fear to blot out what we truly want? Somehow we always allow the fear of rejection, of failure, of getting even slightly hurt, to blind us. When we worry over things that don’t deserve fear, at least not to such an extent, we lose track of what we really want. The walls that keep us from success only become harder and harder to topple. Unless we conquer these silly, irrational fears, we will never reach our dreams. As many martial arts teach, the fear of pain must be conquered. In the end, only martial artists have to conquer pain, but every person must conquer fear.
The one thing that seems to resurface time and time again, though it only surfaces occasionally, is the prospect of failing to help others when they are truly in need. I fear that my actions that I view as good end up being foolish and rash. Yet, at the same time, I fear not being able to do anything. This resulted in a point of a few months where I did countless pointless things in order to “help” others. Ha-ha, holding doors to feed my obsession. These things are still in my habits, but it’s no longer for any reason other than courtesy. Oh, and no, I will not do your homework for you. That isn’t in the scope of “truly in need.”
What did I fear as a kid? A better question would be what I was not afraid of. I was shy then, and by shy, I mean utterly afraid of others. I was afraid of people to the point that it was courageous for me to go up to a cash register and buy something on my own. That faded through life experience. On the other hand, there is the paranormal. Those monsters that live in my closet, those ghosts that turn my lamps on, and zombies, lots and lots of them, still nag me at times. Yet, it is now less fear, and more fun. The eventual robot takeover, however, is something to be truly feared. Well, at least we have Will Smith, though Isaac Asimov would likely be rolling in his grave when he saves us.
My fear as a child most likely came from the fact that that I was pretty much alone minus my family for the first seven years of my life. Yes. Seven. Though I did play with others, I didn’t have any specific group of friends to stay with. I didn’t even get bullied. I just seemed to watch. This, along with the fact that I was hit countless times unjustly as punishment (Oh…I’ll regret mentioning that), made me uncomfortable around people. As a result of not talking to others, I also gained an overactive imagination, which explains the fear of the paranormal. Frankly, it’s still that way. My current fear, however, is just a mish-mash of me not wanting to screw up completely, thus setting back my dream of doing something to make the world a happier place. Ironically, that fear in itself is a setback.
Though it has become less and less frequent in the recent months, I have allowed fear to affect my actions. After all, like I’ve said, I want to do something to improve the lives of others. The fear of screwing up, however, has prevented me from doing anything countless times. I usually end up cursing myself until I return home. I then scold myself for moping about, and each time, I get closer and closer to solving it. I’m also horrible at starting conversation, so I’m a bit apprehensive about it, and end up skipping it unless it’s important.
Fear is good! It is the only thing that keeps us humans alive. We can’t just keep walking forward, knocking everything in our path down. There will be something too strong, or too dangerous in our way. When in fear, we do things that would not have normally.. Perhaps we’ll gain strength from adrenaline, and protect ourselves, or save others. Perhaps we’ll run at speeds beyond our own ability, and survive to fight another day. Perhaps we’ll think out every little thing, preparing us for the outcome. Perhaps, we’ll never again clean that computer processor while the power cable is still attached. Not a nice experience, though the action wasn’t exactly logical in the first place. There are countless stories of fear saving lives. Even recently, there was a man who beat a bear to death with a branch when attacked. He was afraid, and fought because he knew he would die otherwise. Though we may not beat bears to death in daily life, our fears are integral in our very survival.
If you want to try something new, like auditioning for a school play or running for a club office, but you don’t because you’re afraid, you are holding yourself back. If you allow the opinions of others to control your actions, you are holding yourself back. So what does “holding yourself back” mean? It means to prevent yourself from being the happiest best possible you, you can be. The quote, “"You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith" is very true. All too often, we let little seeds of uncertainties bloom into colossal fears.
I have many fears, such as spiders, heights, sharks, etc, but most of them connect to a major fear, which is that I’m terrified of pain. Now I’m not talking about “boo-boos” and skinned-knees pain, I’m talking about getting your finger nails ripped out, losing a limb, waking up in the middle of surgery pain. I’ve never been seriously injured, (knock on wood) so I’ve never felt real pain. I’ve never been to the ER, and I’ve never broken any bones, except some toes, which didn’t even hurt at all. Suffering is unknown to me and that is probably why I’m so fearful. I’ve seen horror movies, I’ve seen people get hurt, and it doesn’t look fun. I hate watching horror movies, so when people describe scenes from Hostel and Saw, I get queasy. The words ‘Achilles tendon’ make my stomach turn. I also have a big fear of rollercoasters, which I’ve been trying to overcome for several years. I’m always afraid that the ride is going to break down or I’m going to fall out of the seat. Even though I know any of those things happening is unlikely, it still bombards my thoughts whenever I enter Great Adventure or Bush Gardens.
When I was little I was deathly afraid of bridges. Just the thought of them freaked me out. Whenever the car drove over a bridge, I’d hold my breath, close my eyes, cover my ears, and hide under a pillow. It seems ridiculous now, but back then, it made perfect sense. I believed that bridges collapsed all the time, therefore if I held my breath, I’d be ready if the bridge started to crumble and the car fell into the sea. I never overcame this fear; it just changed as I got older. I do not hide under a pillow or hold my breath anymore; but I am afraid that the car will drive off the bridge, land in the ocean, and I’ll die because I am trapped in the car or being mauled by sharks.
I can think some times when I let fear hold me back. For example, I take a few college prep classes. In CP, you can get by with B or C, but if you’re determined and willing to study, you can end the marking period with an A. I’m one of the few in my CP classes that wants an A. Unfortunately this drive usually causes everyone in my class to know me only by “Smart Girl,” never Caitlin. Freshman year, in an effort to fit in I desperately wanted my classmates to know me by my name, and not by my grade point average. So in class whenever the teacher asked a question, which I usually knew the answer to, I kept my hand down. Now I wasn’t trying to fail or anything like that, I still studied and aced tests it’s just that I was doing it without everyone else knowing. I held myself back and, today, I ultimately regret it. It was stupid of me to let everyone else’s opinions dictate my actions. I should not have been afraid of what others thought about me. I should have been proud of my ability, not ashamed. Now in CP, I don’t mind being the girl with a million extra credit points.
So can fear be good? Yes. Fear can be a lifesaver. Just watch an episode of Oprah. Countless women have felt uncomfortable in a situation, such as walking home alone or giving directions to a strangers, and because of fear they avoided being abducted or raped. If I didn’t fear skin grafts and cancer, what’s to stop me from slathering on baby oil instead of SPF? How about fire? When I was around five years old, I tripped over a camping chair and fell into a campfire. Luckily, I stuck my hands out in front of me, which stopped the rest of my body from landing in the fire, and my mom transforming into superwomen and flying across the campsite to rescue me helped too; but after that experience, I became afraid that my house would burn down, most likely with my family, my pets, and I inside. This has led to me, at every bonfire or campout, checking to make sure there’s an emergency bucket, pool, or hose close by. This fear has been useful because there have been times when campfires have gotten out of control, but because I’m afraid, I was the first one there with the bucket of water.
MEG LEE:
"I can not sleep with my fan on because even though it is installed perfectly, I am afraid that it will fly off and chop my head off. I can not sleep with my windows open because I am afraid that someone will climb into my room and rape me"
OMG! I thought I was the ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD who has that fear of fans. When I was younger, I was scared of the dark, so I'd crawl up into my parents' room to sleep next to them. and their fan was RIGHT above the bed, and it was so wobbly, I couldn't sleep, I just knew that the fan would break off and slit our throats or something. And it wasn't one of the fans where you could flip a switch and turn it off, I had to jump up on the bed to pull down the string. needless to say, I'd wake my parents up everytime, and they'd kick me out of the room. (Thanks mom and dad =].) And I'm probably one of the most paranoid people in the WORLD when it comes to rapists. Never are my windows EVER unlocked, nor are my shades ever up. Before I go to bed, I walk around the house locking everything. And my house is always unlocked (so for anyone who wants to come rob a house one day, mine is the perfect house, just don't mind if you hear someone screaming in a bedroom, it's only my nanny). My house is pretty big, and has a lot of windows and doors in the living room, so it's so hard for me to ever be in there at night, because if the dogs start barking, I KNOW someone's out there watching me. Which is why I lock myself in my room whenever I'm home =]
Jordan:
I understand where you're coming from, about the whole I'm not gonna just see someone some day and be like "you're the person I'm gonna fall in love with". If there's anything I don't believe in more than love, it's love at first sight. But, I do have an amazing talent of judging people from first impressions. Not yet have I been wrong. I feel like when I'm around people, they each give off their own unique "vibes". (This is where it relates to me "falling in love") I just think that if I "talk" to people, I can learn to see if I like the vibe they give off, which tells me whether or not I should give it a shot. I think people would understand that kind of vibe.. the whole you get so nervous around them, you can barely speak, barely breathe. But at the same time you just feel so completely comfortable? Idk, I haven't felt that exact feeling yet. Close, but not.
Hilary:
Have I ever mentioned how much I miss talking to you? Because I do. And I was singing the Big Comfy Couch song today, and was thinking of you. haha. But anyway, thanks girl, I mean love should be meant for everyone (How it pains me to try to be optimistic). But looking at today's society, the amount of people depressed and divorced, it's sad? I don't want to risk THINKING I'm in love, only to find out ten years later that the dude is not meant for me. I'm a firm believer that you cannot love others until you learn to love yourself, and that is something I really need to work on. And I completely agree with you, love is just too complex to understand at the moment, and I just don't think I'm ready.
Okay.
See, I based all this on phrases I’ve heard, matched with my limited knowledge of physics.
We’ve all heard the phrase “grain of truth,” right? That was my first assumption. All the rest is based on this.
The next phrase I worked with was “The shadow of a lie.” Lies don’t work unless there is some truth to them. So truth would have to be there to cast the shadow. Shadows need light to be cast, ergo, truth must glow.
Also, if we’re going to be casting shadows, we need some opaque object. I said already that lies must be at least partially truth, or (here’s how I interpreted it then. I might revise it sometime when I have more time) be actually the shadow of truth. So, if truth is going to cast a shadow, it must be opaque.
Then, truth seems to irritate people, rub them the wrong way. But after long, constant exposure to truth, they become smoother and smoother, calmer and calmer. This is the same effect that an abrasive substance (like sand) has on a rough substance. Think of pebbles and shells, worn round and hard by the bed of the sea. So truth, because it has the same effects, must also be abrasive.
Again, I might revise it. It would make for a fun (and confusing) occasional paper, perhaps.
Every fears something but when it interferes with your faith it starts to break you down. After it convinces you against the thing you fear most you lose your dreams. You don’t want to expand and spread your imagination so you dreams disappear. I feel that that is the general meaning to Morrissey’s quote. My biggest fear as of now is not necessarily big. I fear most of what is to become of my family and me later. I hate the fact that I can’t know when I will lose someone and not be able to cope. I fear that one-day when I am fighting with my parents something bad will happen and it will stick with me forever. (Not to sound really paranoid or anything) No, I never really had any big fears up until about 9th grade. My daily fears were if I had a pimple, my hair was a mess, or if I wouldn’t have anything to do later. But no big fears or nightmares, that I can remember at least. When I was little I worried about my brother being anywhere within five feet of me. I was always scared when he left because I thought he wouldn’t come back. I think I felt this way and still do is because I don’t have many people who are around me everyday and I don’t know how id live without them. Also I feel this way I think because I fight with my parents so much and if they ever were to die I know I would regret everything. The same if my brother left and then I never saw him again when I was younger. Fear can feel good and be a good thing when it makes you think about something. If people didn’t have feel they wouldn’t stop twice about doing something that normally fear would say it’s not safe. Lindsey states it exactly the way I would when she says, Fear is what keeps people from killing anyone they feel like, and it keeps people out of harm’s way. We have rules so people will fear the consequence.” Fear balances you out by acting like another push to something perhaps better. Eva shares my thought in that its okay to miss chances but you cant drag them out because what’s the point? I’m not necessarily it is ever a good thing to feel but if you didn’t have it you wouldn’t be the same. Fear normally only kicks in when I’m in trouble or I freak myself out about something. We all know when we get in trouble we suddenly get scared of what happens next. Fear stresses some people out but fear does bring some safety into our lives.
To Leonor:
"No I’m not afraid of what’s going to happen in the next seven seconds but in general in TERRIFIED of the distant future. I don’t know what I’m going to major in college, heck I don’t know what colleges I’m even applying to. I have no clue as to if who I am now is the person I want to be for the rest of my life but seriously no one knows this and it just creeps me out that I don’t know most of the answers about life that I thought I should know by now." True that. Although I disagree with your interpretation of the question. I don't think you even need to fall on your face. At least that means you tried. A true failure is someone who never even tries.
In response to Jen P:
"I hate, hate, hate relying on others." I only like relying on others when I know they can get the job done. As for your fear of a whole lot of things... I think you just need to relax and let things happen. :]
Yo Alice, let me answer your question. You see, you say that everyone is afraid of death, but I don't know why, but I've been hearing about it soo much that it just has become like an accepted inevitability. I don't know why, but I believe that everyone has a laid out path that they must travel upon. Somewhere along that path, death will be the inevitable obstacle that I simply will not be able to pass. When I reach it, it means that my time on this world is up. After that, Im a little fuzzy. I really don't have any beliefs as to what happens when you die, I hope that its a lot nicer than just becoming a rotting corpse.
I don't think this quote is referring to fear in the traditional sense. Rather, it is more likely to be talking about hesitation and self-doubt. If you hold yourself back over the concern that things won't work in your favor, things never will. So remember kids, you'll never know if the tellers are too afraid of being shot to call the police to the bank until you rob it.
I'm a little ticked off at this blog because I was going to do my occasional paper about my early fears. I'd brainstormed and everything. Oh well. I'll just pour a bit of that into the blog. First, however, I have to talk about my current fears. For my greatest fear: Spiders. Yeah, it's not very deep. Yes, I could go into the deep psychological fears that plague mankind, or personal fears developed from childhood or even recent trauma. Sure, I'm afraid of talking to random people, touching skin to skin with people, long-term relationships, and I expect that if I fell out of an airplane, that would be terrifying too. Unfortunately, you didn't ask me a question to which I could respond with any of these. The question was “what is your biggest fear”. I am afraid of spiders. No, I'm terrified of spiders. If there was a spider on my keyboard, there would be no blog submitted by me tonight. I have a profound love for padded, enclosed, coffin-like spaces, but I will never act on it because of spiders. If I need to kill a spider, I will take half of a roll of paper towels to put space between it and me. I saw a spider once on a trash can at my grandmother's house. Every time she asked me to take it to the curb after that I used a wire hanger rather than grabbing the handle directly. I will not go to a place where spiders are likely to be present. The presence of spiders causes me to panic, become sick, and get dizzy. If this compels any one of you to taunt me with a fake spider, please realize that you run a large risk of being beaten with your own limbs and having your first born child stolen by the Baba Yaga. Spiders have not, however, always been my greatest fear. No, my greatest fear as a child was Gooey Gus, the slime monster from the last episode of Ghostwriter. For those who do not know the most feared monster of the 90s, I will provide a link so you can see what he looks like, complete with music wholly inappropriate for the picture. http://gooeygus.ytmnd.com/ This guy scared and scarred me. I had no time to be afraid of anyone else. Nothing else bothered me as a kid, because nothing could compare. When I went to the basement, I was afraid the slime monster was there. When I went to bed, I asked my mother to check the closet for the slime monster. I never learned how bad the show was, or the fact that the slime monster was only in a story the characters were writing, because if I ever saw his face, I would run screaming from the room to my parents, lie on the floor in the fetal position, and forget his features, one by one. You get the picture. Nowadays, there are no individual images not of spiders that will scare me to the point that I cannot look at them. I suppose I overcame my fear of him simply from watching scarier things.
Anyway, for why I was scared by these things, think about it. The fear of spiders is instinctual in most people. My fear just must have gone into overdrive. As for the slime monster... Look at him! He's freaky looking! (You can find the episodes with him on youtube if you search for “Attack of the Slime Monster”) I very rarely let fear keep me from going anywhere, unless of course, there are spiders there. In that case you'd need to give me a very good reason. Between shoot myself, and crush a dead tarantula with my hands, I would end myself very quickly. Spiders keep me from doing things. I don't regret my spider avoiding choices, because if I hadn't made them, I would have been confronted with spiders, which as you may or may not know, I have a bit of a fear of. I suppose I could have let known a few more of my middle-school crushes, but those lasted several months at best. Throughout my life, many of the friends I've had which made life livable were female. I've found that it's just not worth it to risk compromising those friendships because I also happen to be attracted to them.
In ending this, I'll spare you the psychoanalysis of human instinct and the monkey metaphors. Fear is a good thing in general, because it keeps people out of situations which could do permanent damage to their minds and bodies.
To Dan: Way to google "Quotes on Fear" just before doing your blog. Not that I didn't do the exact same, but still. Also, right with you on the band thing, though it's mostly over just one person being just a little (severely) hypocritical.
There is too much spirt in too many men for the soul to dissapear. People are too full of life to vanish after their corpse gives out. This much I can swear to.
As long as life is anything more than order applied to entropy, we must have some destination after we shed this prison of clay.
It's too late to comment any more, but tomorrow I'll read and possibly reply to my other friends and people who have replied to my blogs (Myra, Ivan, anyone whose name can be shortened to meg, etc)
To Haley:
I loved your blog! I agree with so much of what you said.
“I don’t watch any of those ‘Saw’ or ‘Hostile’ movies because I have nightmares. Not even just for that night. Sometimes for a week or two. I wish I was kidding”
I know exactly what you mean. After I watch Law & Order, especially if I’m home alone, I get really jumpy and for the rest of the night every noise is a burglar breaking in and every dark shadow is an intruder or serial killer. I feel crazy because even though I know nothing is there, I still get pretty scared.
To Devon:
You always have the most interesting stories. (Pennstate<33)
=]
At the risk of sounding huffy, Brendan, I was actually thinking of that quote as soon as I noticed the title acronymed to fear. So :P
To Ivan: Asimov's been spinning ever since that movie's screenplay was written. I don't care if it did have Will Smith. I, Robot the movie was garbage.
"At first glance, I would say my biggest fear is either losing a close relative or failing at life,"
haha John, thats everyone :p
This quote comments on the fact that one of the very few things holding a person back in life are their fears. If a person was to have complete faith in what they do they would rarely fail. Morrissey talks about the “dream” but I doubt she is commenting on one’s ability to reach REM or NREM (which-ever one you dream in). She is using the dream as a synonym for goal or object of desire.
At this point in my life my biggest fear is impossible to name but it has come up in some blogs thus far. My greatest fear is the fear of opinion and judgment that opinions and judgments are made about me that are not true and that people don’t understand what they see. This fear of mine is slightly hypocritical, as I am one of the most judgmental people I know. I often get to know a person and then categorize this person into a spot in my life and they will stay there for quite a while, movement from one’s “box” creates a peeved reaction from me.
Also, I fear not achieving what I want to achieve and what is expected of me. The fear of being unable to get a “good” job because I don’t get into a “good” college is one that looms large in my eyes, taunting me with my potential failure in life.
My fears have changed over time, but overall themes have stayed the same. When I was little I was most afraid of 1) being alone, 2) the dark, and 3) bugs (like millipedes, not spiders so much). These fears of mine were maybe not so much overcome as outgrown. If anything all that I did was force myself into the dark and to be alone, nothing was really done about the bugs, they still freak me out.
I think that I am afraid of judgment and being unable to achieve because I fear things that I am unable to control myself. I want to be able to control everything that is happening around me, not a very good desire, but one that makes me feel safe. I prescribe to the “If you want something done right, do it yourself, or watch someone else do it,” life theory. When I was young my fear of being alone and my fear of the dark stemmed from the fear of the unknown. What I did not know often did in fact hurt me, such as when I could not see the moved chair and ran into it, or got lost in the supermarket and wandered down the aisles looking for my mom, and quietly returned to her side before she noticed. I had one dream as a young child in preschool that I still remember to this day. I was riding on a black horse behind the boy who I had a crush (as much as a 3 year-old can have a crush) on and we were in a maze that was one of the circle mazes that I was horrible at solving and still am. This dream was horrible and was the worst nightmare I ever remember having, where I was in the back, unable to control where I was going and in the dark where I couldn’t see, combined with the fact that even if I was able to control my direction, I was unable to go to the right place anyway.
I try to rarely stop myself from doing (or not doing) anything as a consequence of my great fears, however I know that I am an utter failure at that. I rarely do things that I have not done before and any break in my routine is disturbing to me. More often than not when given the choice I will make myself camouflaged as to not attract attention and thus judgment. I am the epitome of a quavering child on the inside, desperately searching for a mom that is just not there. Thus, I sing a happy song and continue on. However, when I miss out on something that did not turn out as I feared, I regret not doing it. I often wish that I actually caught the ball in gym sometimes, instead of doing the “tree impersonation” and letting the object bounce off me (consequence of my general distrust of objects flying at my head at a high rate of speed).
Fear is a good thing when is sharpens your awareness and gives you the ability to do things you never could, like lift a tree off a child or some such other miracle act. This fear is good because it focuses all of you body’s resources on one thing, so it gets done. However this fear is bad when you fail to notice the rock that will shortly fall on your head. Oh well, that’s life.
--Ali B
Jon-
I am glad to see that you put down the SAT vocab in 6th grade. One of my Hess memories is being horrified at the thought of "old" things like the SATs being so near that I needed to start preparing.
"Sure, I'm afraid of talking to random people, touching skin to skin with people, "
haha Brenden, you are possibly the greatest eprson I know.
"My biggest fear in life right now is to be rejected. This has always been a fear of mine but ever since I reached high school it’s made its way up to my number one fear."-Linds
I though your biggest fear was me?
Does anybody besides me think this isn't just failure of successs, but it could also mean fear disabling our journey to dreams?
Meaning making you unable to sleep?
"You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith."
I believe that Mary Manin Morrissey is trying to say that when you let your fears stand in the way of what you truly want and believe in, you are what is stopping yourself.
Currently, my fears vary, but the one that I believe stands out the most is the fear of not having a bright future. Everyday I face the fact that I am approaching the point in my life where I won’t be able to depend on anybody else to help me out with my problems, and that scares me. Basically for my whole life I have been in the ‘smart classes’, being told how I have something special, and that I am going to be very successful in all of my future endeavors, but what if I did the complete opposite. I would be that example that all of the middle school teachers would use, ‘Look at what happens when you lose focus, you’ll end up like Brittany Goetze.’ I am afraid of not getting accepted to a college at all, and be forced to go to ACCC to learn culinary arts and work as a chief at the rusty bucket for the rest of my life. Added to this stress and pressure is the faith that my parents have in me, because to them I am the smart child. My little sister had no chance, and was disadvantaged with seizures during her toddler years, which pretty much kept her from learning pretty much anything.
I have to say that this has not been a fear that I have struggled with throughout my entire life. As a child, I feared being accepted, and thought that people would think that I was weird, so I would pretend to be something that I wasn’t. I overcame this fear my freshman year, when I met new people who weren’t afraid to be different, especially the mullicans, who didn’t judge me by the things that I used to be before I met them. As I entered middle school my biggest fear was not making the soccer team, and not being able to see any of my friends, because for some odd reason I thought that Davies was bigger than Hess School. I overcame this fear when I realized that Davies was exactly like Hess, except for the fact that you had lockers. It was the first time that I had a locker, and had to walk to class by myself, which completely freaked me out. As I entered High school, I had the fear that somebody was going to murder me. I wouldn’t stay home alone EVER, and would hear creepy noises when I got home at 3:00. When I was home alone, I had to turn all of the televisions on, and close all of the windows. I would then put the house phone on the coffee table in my living room, where I stayed, and my cell phone in my lap. (just in case) I don’t think that I really overcame this fear, but I just stopped thinking about it.
I don’t think that fear really stops me from doing anything, unless it involves me getting injured. I try to really think about things before I actually act, and I don’t think that its out of fear. Fear can be a good thing to feel when it prevents you from doing something stupid, and it helps you to realize when something is not ‘right’.
Mike-
You know how dangerous shovels are, don't you? If I remember correctly there were nine stitches to someones' eye (lid).
"I've actually been having long long talks with my guidance counselors about this very subject. We analyze how much (and believe me it's a lot) my goals have changed since freshman year, and why. Right now, my biggest fear is the future. That's pretty much always been one of my top fears." Jon
I really think this comes down to being almost anyones fear at one time or another. We can all at one point be afraid of the day, or what is going to happen tommarow. Anyone that would deny they haven't felt this at one time is a fool, and if they aren't lying when they deny it, they are a madman. The future can simply be scary.
lol no Eva, like fears stop us in accomplishign our goals. I.E. an actual fear keeps us from accomplishing them. I'm not saying this is the quotes primary meaning, I'm just listing a potential.
I thought that was what the quote said directly.
It may be past time for comments, but I've said a lot so since I seem to have forgotten, I have an extreme fear of forgetfulness *sigh* My Grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's when I was a little kid. She suffered a stroke when I was in sixth grade that impaired her memory to the point where she would take walks at 3 AM and not remember how to get home. We had to have her put into a 'not-nursing-home' (assisted living facility, but it's pretty much the same) and now she doesn't remember me, my mom, or any of the 22 of her kids and grandkids. I really am afraid of getting like that, but since it's genetic, I probably will. So yeah. Forgetting things. Scares the crap out of me. *sigh*
My materialist fear, as I so call it, is roller coasters My mom has told me it really does not make sense to her; I'll be willing to take on more than seven pounds of fat slobs beating me up every play on the field, yet I can't even go on a roller coaster than toddlers may go on. I really believe that it's just a mix of a slight fear of heights and fear of an accident. This must have just been a fear I developed when I was younger because as long back as I can remember, I've always hated roller coasters. For the most parts heights is no longer an issue, but large amusement park rides leave me sickly thinking about them.
Billy- i have the exact same fear. Roller coasters scare me to death, and so do escalators. I know both of them are weird and everyone tells me that same thing, that its stupid. Yet, i don't think anyone really understands it unless they have the same fear as you. I completely understand the fear of roller coasters, just ask Dev she had to like drag me on the small ones at six flag. I'm just not a risk taker. Oh and i know its because of the heights. It's really cool to have the same fear as you. hehe.
Oh and your my biggest fear in so many ways. I don't think i could truly write them all down. In both good and bad ways.
Dan, I can completely relate to you with the whole Alzheimer's thing. Not only does that run in my family, but chronic depression, cancer, alcohol problems, and I swear just straight-up insanity. And I fear each and every one of those things, only because I would never want to turn out like any of my family members because I know how horribly it's affected them and the people around them.
In response to John M:
"As for your fear of a whole lot of things... I think you just need to relax and let things happen. :]"
Agh, the one thing people tell me the most is to "relax", but I seem to create more and more problems for myself each day, more things to worry about, more things to stress over, more things to prevent me from sleeping at night (which, btw, sleeping is at the top of my list of my favorite things to do). Not only is it hard for me to relax, but it's even harder for me to just "let things happen". I tell other people all the time to just "let it flow", but I rarely take my own advice.
I think the Mary Manin Morrissey’s quote is trying to get across a true idea. The idea that if you let fear take you over, and alter your choices and decisions, then you will lose faith in yourself, which in turn, may harm the big picture, your dreams. This is quite so because fear sometimes gets in the way of what you believe in, and you might start to change your opinions, choices, and decisions based on that fear.
My biggest fear. This is a toughy. Not because I’m superwoman and I fear nothing, but because I try not to spend too much time and thought on things that cause me grief or stress. Once I think of it, I start to ponder of it for hours, and it’ll stay in the back of my mind for the remainder of the day. My fear is of Bloody Mary. I am totally and utterly afraid of that darn woman. Sometimes I think to myself that she could never be real, but then I start to glance around at mirrors, and think that she is more likely to come out and attack me if I’m a non-believer. So then in my head, I’m thinking to myself, ‘Oh god, never mind I believe in you! Don’t kill me!’ Like seriously, I despise bathrooms. I also hate when I begin to think about her when I’m in the shower. It’s frightening really. I would be locked in the bathroom, defenseless, vulnerable, and what in the world would happen if the power goes out??? I’ll tell you what’ll happen. I’ll immediately think of Bloody Mary, but only once, because I think that if you even THINK her name three times, you’re dead meat. Then, I’d tear open the shower, grab my towel, tear open the door, and run out for my dear life. Only once I was far enough, I’d probably put the towel on. I am seriously very afraid of this woman…thing. I refuse to even let my mom try it. She doesn’t believe in such nonsense. Even if I say, “Fine. Go try it then. You’ll die”, she makes the move to got try. Then I have to run over and tell her not to, because it’s going to happen, and I don’t want to lose her. I refuse to let anyone do it. Grrr…I despise this woman thinger.
My fear has always been the same. I think it originated from my brother. Every since I could remember, he insisted on scaring me to death all the time. So, very frequently, when I was in the shower, he’d start reading the tale of Bloody Mary through the door. Because I was small, I didn’t lock the door because my parents thought I would drown myself or something. (Although I did believe that I would get sucked down the drain, thanks the Rugrats.) Anyways, then my brother would open the door, and turn the lights off, and there I would go. Run, open door, run. (All the while screaming mind you.) I haven’t overcome it. Hahahahha. I don’t think I ever will.
I actually stop myself a lot. Afterwards I regret it tremendously because I know I should have done it. I wish I could act more aggressive in my decisions that I make. If I did, I’d have way less to regret in life. For example, Cabaret Night, freshmen year. Remember seeing me on stage, singing that AMAZING SONG??? Oh wait- never mind, I didn’t DO IT. Ugh, that was such a regret. I basically just chickened out last minute for fear of what people would think, and how I would be perceived.
Fear is only a good thing when you have – okay wait. it’s never. I don’t really believe fear can solve anything unless you are like a dictator or pharaoh. Then, perhaps fear may be necessary. Other than that, it’s the devil. (Water boy.)
Sergei -
"HaHa, I remember being afraid of all the standard things as a child. There was darkness, there were stairs and bycicles(Ill elaborate on that one), there were animals, and later on in the years, there was death. "
Lol, what was wrong with bicycles??? Everything else though, i totally agree, they are standard to be afraid of. I'm also pretty sure i am still afraid of darkness. =p
ADDRESSING MAEGAN (and the quote!): I completely and utterly agree. I don’t consider myself to have many fears, but those I do have are either healthy, keep-me-alive fears or they are the kind of fears and ideas that I run screaming away from, to a happier, safer, better place, both mentally and in concern to my position and situation in life.
ADDRESSING TAMARI: I never knew you wanted to be a director! That is so cool. I respect people who are going for careers in the arts a lot, because it is a very competitive field, and you do have to be a certain kind of person to hold a position in it. Here is my suggestion to you: I imagine by now you have heard about the film institute, available your senior year as a history, English, and media. I would recommend you take it, because many of my friends did last year, and it really helped them decide what film was to them. For some it was an interesting hobby they would continue to do in their spare time, probably for the rest of their lives; but for some it was the inspiration they needed to find the determination within themselves to move through a film major at college and tackle the career path, no matter how intimidating their odds. And I have faith that some of them will be the big names of tomorrow. We’re really lucky to have this opportunity at our school, so you should try to take advantage of it! Also, the word in the biz is that Phili is up and coming as a more major player in the film industry, and that might matter right around the time you’re looking for jobs. One last tip; over the summer before your senior year, I would recommend keeping an eye out and doing some internet searches. Look for filming going on nearby, or in Philadelphia, and see if you can either audition to be an extra or just ask politely to hang around set, to get a feel for the atmosphere of the job itself. Best of luck!!
Okay, so on to the blog!
I have had the hardest time imaginable trying to think of something to put on this blog. I’ve read through everybody’s responses (I normally skim about ¾ of them and actually read any that grab my attention.) looking for ideas. I have been randomly asking people what their greatest fears are since this was posted, and honestly, I have learned a lot about the people around me and very little about myself. For instance, a paraphrased instant message conversation I had with my boyfriend:
I asked what his greatest fear was, and why he was afraid of it, and at first I just got a lot of silence in return. When he eventually finished contemplating the question, I got an answer I had been anticipating: the future. He’s one of those insane “I-took-APcalc2-and-APphysics-before-graduating-from-Oakcrest-and-now-I’m-majoring-in-math-and-physics” kinds of people, but he has yet to determine even a general idea of what he would like to do for a living. I suppose in this way it makes perfect sense for him to be afraid about the future, but this answer was useless to me. I already knew that about him, so I didn’t learn anything new there, and it’s also not a fear I share; on the contrary, I’m incredibly excited for the future. I know what I want to do and how I want to get there. I’m impatient for the present to end, actually. The more time I spend in Oakcrest, the more disgusted I am with humanity and the youth of today, and the more I want to become a hermit. And the more time I spend with adults who expect what they teach to be the only thing occupying my time -dance teachers expecting me to have time to practice, drama directors expecting me to have enough time to learn French, AP teachers expecting me to have time to deal with their overwhelming workloads- the more I find our society ridiculous. It’s not practical. I can’t do all the things colleges want me to do (take hard classes, be involved in sports, be involved in the community) and hold a job that will pay for the education I’m trying to obtain. It’s ridiculous. So the faster I get out of this stage of my life, personally, the better.
His second fear, however, was a bit more relatable. Since August, when he left for Towson University in Maryland, I’ve been forced to think about some things that I wasn’t entirely comfortable confronting: when he left, we’d been going out for a little over a year. Actually, today is the 22nd, so we’ve been going out for a year and two months, exactly. It’s flown by, really. But I had to force myself to face up to the possibility of it all coming to an end. There are some challenges we cannot anticipate, but I tried to foresee and prepare myself for all of the unhappy options, just in case. It was a precautionary measure, and so far an unnecessary one, but I always feel the need to know that if something drastic should happen, I would be able to deal with it. For instance, suppose he had moved in and met the girl across the hall, who happened to be gorgeous and funny and personable and not at all cynical or broken like me. Well, who could really blame him if he eventually decided she was a better option than me? Certainly not I, for as my own worst critic I’ve never truly believed I deserve him. But it was this second fear of his that made me ponder. “The other thing I am most afraid of, that affects my daily life, is the fear of losing you.” There was definitely a time this was a fear of mine. But (fortunately? Unfortunately?) the way I manage to manipulate my mind, this has ceased to be a real fear of mine. Losing him would be dreadful, more than anything in the whole world, and hurt worse than dying. (I’m not just being dramatic. At least you don’t have to wake up every day after dying, feeling the pain wash over you all over again, fresh and fury-driven.) But it is not something I’m actively afraid of for two reasons. One, I’m slowly beginning to believe it might be possible for him to be as taken with me as I am with him, making it nearly impossible for me to lose him that way. And two, it’s morbid and unrealistic to think he, a perfectly healthy 18 year old, would just suddenly die, or go comatose. So losing him is no longer currently a fear of mine.
I’ve done this with almost everything mentioned so far. Analysed it to the point where I do not consider it a fear any longer. Heights: I love heights. The dark: is just a lack of light. Being lost: you find the most awesome things when you’re not looking for them. Sharks: how often have I seen sharks? Bugs: puh-lease. Gross? Yes. To be feared? Not even. Being forgotten: I want to be forgotten by all but a few people, although I would really like those few people to have been so profoundly affected by me they go on to do something awesome.
I have come to realize that in this way I have made myself believe I have no fears, for mostly my whole life, which made this blog extremely difficult for me.
Tarah -
"My biggest fear however has to be the fear of loosing things."
haha, i straight up thought you meant lost things. =) Like your ring today that you "misplaced".
BILLY CHEAT- read my blog please. I address the "scared of the future" issue, and I can almost assure you I'm not a madman.
I am, however, not afraid of the future in any way.
I know that time's up, but I just feel like I should reply back to Serj! ^_^
To Serj:
I guess you're right... I was thinking of it in the way where you're about to get murdered or something. I mean, no one wants to die like that right? Or if you fell into a ditch and was stuck there, basically starving to death... Yeah... while I can understand that death is inevitable and we shouldn't be afraid of it, no one really wants to die before their time.
Agreed
To Myra: I think I may understand your simple fear of death. I used to have something similar. Rather than fear, though, it was frustration. I would lie awake at night on the verge of tears frustrated that there was no easy answer to what happened after death. Eventually I came to the conclusion that all religions are just plain silly when you look at them logically. I still don't like thinking about lack of existence, but at least I have an answer.
To Ivan - The fear of other people. Jesus, that is something I am familiar with. I remember the first time a friend invited me over his house I immediately cried, convinced his parents were trying to kidnap me. God help me those few times I mistook another tall figure for my dad as a small child. Much screaming and crying were imminent after those run-ins. Then again, I was diagnosed with Aspurgers, so I guess I'm doing fairly well for myself.
To Meg Lee - Despite being male, I've actually always had a fear of being raped. Even now, whenever an adult man is a bit too friendly or a doctor needs to touch me, I get a little freaked out... Eeech.
Alright, that's all I really can comment on for now.
Oh, and Ashley, we are now rivals. At first I felt bad about my own writing after reading yours, but I know I'm capable of great writing. You just wait. No more feelings of inferiority for me, nope.
i know this is totally late and no one will ever read this probably, but it needs to be said.
Jon -
"I can never focus on one girl at a time for fear of failing and ending up alone. That’s actually a logical technique for me, since girls tend to lose interest in me just as quickly as they gain it. "
Ok. Well not being able to focus on one girl at a time might just be your problem. Maybe if you would, then you wouldnt have such an extension line of failures. Believe me when i say that everyone, to some degree, is worried that they will end up alone. It isn't just you. However, you don't see anyone else focusing on other girls while they are going out with ONE girl. It may seem logical to you, but to the girl, that's so disrespectful, and makes them feel like shit no different from the other girls you may be keeping on the "back burner". That would result in their loss of interest.
^^^^ wow well said megan!
and Hayley-- i just read your blog & comment-- WAY TO TAKE MY QUOTE!!! psht whatev girrrl.
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