Fear

Today I woke up and while browsing something on my phone found this written - (I have this habit of writing down quotes or sentences that I want to remember and follow from various books/talks) - Befriend your fear - dissect each one of your fears and try to see what it is trying to tell you. 

Such a powerful phrase! Every single thing in our life - our behaviour, our beliefs, our actions, our words, our lifestyle is defined by this 4 letter word FEAR! It is a different kind of fear for each one of us and the intensity of each fear also varies - fear of rejection, fear of disapproval, fear of people, fear of death, fear of bad health, fear of looking ugly, fear of accidents and even the fear of being/looking good because someone may feel jealous or shower their eveil eye on us!

I am just trying to think about the last type of fear, because it is so real and at the same time so subtle and most of us try to ignore or push it under the rugs. I am not going to write more about this topic on the last type of fear, as it is upto each one of us to acknowledge our feelings and decide if we want to continue with it.

1. Being truthful to ourselves and acknowledging our fears - small or big, crazy or real - does not matter - a fear is a fear! 

Just by acknowledging the fear, we are becoming aware of it, and the impact slowly lessens.

2. Dissect the fear - again, it is upto each one of us to understand the why/how/what/where the fear started taking root in our hearts. 

Just by analyzing the fear, we may understand that the reality is different and slowly the fear may stop bothering us as much.

3. Befriend the fear - :) we have to try it - befriending all our feelings and learning to live with them - imagine loving all our feelings, what it could do to us.

Just by befriending the fear, we get to realize that in reality fear is just an illusion - it is in our imagination based on past experiences or experiences of others - it is about something that we think might happen in the future - and most times may not even happen.

All the above sounds so easy in writing but to put them to practice is the key. Each one of us have to figure it out for ourselves. I try to ask myself - what is the worst that can happen - and I try to make peace with that worst scenario - and then move on. For most of the fears the worst that can happen is often manageable. For the harshest fears like fear of losing someone to death or the fear of something bad happening to our child or loved one - well, life is a combination of good and bad - so let us face it when it actually happens - rather on facing it every single day!

Acceptance

When I left home this morning for my walk, an incident kept running in my mind. And by the time I finished my 7 km walk, I had also finished writing this post in my head 😊

Last night a friend was sharing her experience about something she was going through. It was a tough experience and a painful one. I could not help but wonder how I would do anything to go through this exact experience. I am being vague here as I do not want to go into the details of what my friend was going through. But the fact was I wish I could go through this myself. This morning I realized how most of us get sad or upset about the incidents that occur in our lives, but in reality these may be exactly what someone else is praying for! Yes, the pain one person goes through is very real and genuine. I am not at all undermining the pain nor am I saying that just because someone else is seeking the exact same thing, the person in pain should ignore his/her own pain. What I understood this morning was that every single experience/incident comes with a purpose. We may not understand the purpose right away, but if we pause and think, we realize that it was for our benefit or growth. 

I know, my mind already popped the question of what is good about losing someone, or about falling ill. As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, only when an old flower falls, there is space for a new bud to bloom. Ups and downs, highs and lows, happy and sad, beautiful and ugly, x and y - everything as a whole makes life, makes the universe! Only when we accept this truth, can we really LIVE!

A character in one of the TV shows I was watching yesterday said - 

Pain is inevitable, but suffering is our choice!