The Nature of Fear

Fear, of course, is an instinct - it's half the 'fight or flight' response hard-wired into our nervous system. But these two responses aren't equal. One is always stronger than the other, both in an individual, and in a given situation. Thus, the individual whose first response might be flight - be afraid and run away - might, in a particular case - react differently. The first reaction might be to fight - to attack and destroy the threat. That reaction might come from an instantaneous assessment that one is stronger than the threat, or it may come from the very nature of the threat. This threat I attack, that threat I flee.

The first thing we flee, the thing we are hard-wired to fear, is pain. Physical pain. But we also fear emotional pain. And intellectual pain. 

There's a difference between fear and pain: Fear is an emotion. An emotion of the future. It's based on experience, of course. Infants and fools are fearless, the saying goes, because they don't know better. Fear teaches us to "know better." 

It also deceives us. Fear creates false pain - magnifying what is, or what might be, or even what must be. How often after a painful experience - that can include giving a speech or the like - do we say, "that wasn't as bad as I thought"? Or, "that wasn't as painful as I expected"?

Pain of any kind is an experience of the moment. Pain exists in the present tense, and only in the present tense - unless we recall it to memory and re-experience it. Or unless we make it seem real out if its time and out of its proportion, but giving it jurisdiction over the future. But the pain of then doesn't hurt now. It's the pain of now that hurts now. We just turn the pain of then into the pain of now through fear.

Of course, there are things we should be afraid of. Experience is in truth a good teacher. But fear becomes stronger through self-deception - or allowing others to play on our fears.

In the book of Deuteronomy, among the curses for not following G-d's Will and doing His commandments, is one that states the people will flee in fear though no one pursues. A leaf will wave in the wind and the people will think an army chases them.

A day of terror should not become a lifetime of fear. A moment of evil should not define the future. 

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

There is, however, another kind of fear, although fear is the wrong word. Awe is a better word, though, they are sometimes used interchangeably when talking of the Divine. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." But the meaning here is reverence, being overwhelmed, humbled. That's a different kind of fear - the kind we shouldn't fear, but embrace.