Fear

What are you afraid of? Reading about the recent bug attacks on Java and Birdie gave me a good smirk, but it also started me wondering about peoples fears. I was thinking about the things I am afraid of and why I feel that way. I was going to list some things but then I suddenly realized there are many levels to our fears and it would be hard to just say one or two as not all fears are the same. Fear of heights, fear of crowds, fear of snakes or fear of dying, we can't put them all on the same level.
..............Lightning & Spiders & Bears Oh My!........
I guess for me the fears left over from childhood would be these three. They are also not on the same level as some are a healthy fear and one is a bit silly. Spiders, yuck, yucky, yuck! Although I do not scream like a little girl when one jumps out from under something (@Java), they do give me the willys, I shudder without meaning to, my ears make a straining sound as if lifting something heavy when I see one. This I know is silly as one shoe smack will end all my torment. However it is not without reason, when I was younger I saw on TV, hold a spider as they can't hurt you and this way you get used to them. This I started to do and after a while I was doing okay with spiders, one day however I was outside and something was biting me under my shirt, it hurt like heck, I lifted up my shirt to see a shiny yellowish spider sticking his nasty fangs into my soft pink skin. I was shocked, they lied to me! They can hurt us! After that we have been on bad terms ever since. On another note, a friend of mine and also a boy I know of, went to a doctor with terrible pain in one ear, yes you guessed it, a spider had crawled in while they were sleeping and wanted to make a home in their ear canal, so yes it is true, it is not an urban myth it happens. My friend would never harm a spider, he always put them outside or left them alone, now however he kills any spider he see in his house, with two small children he fears one making a child deaf.

With bears, growing up in the country they were always around, they are about the only wild animal in my area of Canada that is dangerous to people, we have large wolves but it is true that 'wild' wolves will not bother people, in fact they nearly jump out of their skin to get away. Most bears are harmless, actually 98% are harmless, it is if you are unlucky enough to meet the one that wants to eat you where things go wrong. It is one of the reasons I won't sleep in a tent, won't go into deep forest alone or walk around outside in the dark. I have a respect for them and have met a few up close on occasion. The only real harm they have done to me is chase me in my dreams from the time I was a small boy until now. Always the same dream, the bear comes crashing through the woods and I run for the house, only to have my feet become heavier with each step until I can barely move up the steps to safety, then I wake up sweating, heart pounding.

Lightening, probably my one true phobia. When a storm is coming and I am outside, I am almost in a blind panic to get inside. If I am trapped out somewhere I break out in a sweat and head for cover. I feel our chances of being hit by lightening are greater than the stats they say. Lightening does not follow any guide lines and I saw some nasty results of it. It also affects how I act, I plan around things to make sure I am never stranded out somewhere if there is the possibility of a storm. To me lightening is like someone firing bullets down at the earth, if you happen to be standing in the wrong spot... well game over.

Those are concrete fears then there is a whole other level of fears, the fear of being alone, fear of growing old alone, of dying alone. The fear of failure, fear of speaking in public, of disappointing people I care about, fear of rejection. Fear of God, fear that there is no God, fear of the unknown, the fear of being a nobody. I can see why people say to start living your life without fear, it has a way of shaping the way we do live our lives and it is often not in a positive way. These are just some of the things that bother me but don't worry, they just pop into my mind, often on a sleepless night. I just want to be clear I am not hiding in a corner with my knees up to my chest quivering. I often feel I am the only one, I thought once I got older that most of these things would go away, My Dad never seemed to be afraid of stuff, if he was he never showed it. Sometimes I feel like a failure because of that, like I'm some big kid that never grew up. I am at a cross road in my life, I should be going back to school and I have the chance to do it. Fear kept me in the closet until now and I worked through that, now I need to work on the fear that is holding me back with the rest of my life because I still don't feel complete, I am still not where I am suppose to be.