Everything we do in life, we do to overcome a certain sense
of fear. You cannot wish fear away, every single moment is filled with it. At
the least, we fear ‘what will I do the next moment’ and at the most we fear ‘I
do not have much time left’. Time is the only constraint man has been unable to
overcome individually, every other constraint is in the mind. But man’s
collective effort is an endeavor towards making up for the lack of individual time
or strength to complete a task.
The ideal state is to fear nothing, a fearless man is a dangerous man. However, it is impossible to overcome every one of our fears. We could make a start. As a child, when we we enter this world, this strange new place from the confort of a mother’s womb we fear everything. The light hurts our eyes, the sound irritates our ears. In a way, all of us ‘grow up’ by conquering small and big fears over our lifetime.
The example that triggered this thought of fear and our
strength to overcome the fear was this – we all like to get a sound sleep, some
of us cannot do so without ‘lights-on’. I think this stems out of a fear of
loneliness and the individual wants the assurance of seeing things, people
around before going into deep sleep. The moment we are in the deep sleep state,
it does not matter if the lights are ‘on’ or not, because our eyes will anyway
not be open to process it. So it should not matter if the lights are off the moment you go to sleep, if you do not fear anything.
But that was just one simple example. If we introspect
truthfully, every action of ours and every behavioral trait of ours, every
habit of ours is evolved to overcome a fear – either already inside us created
byour individual thoughts or artificially put there by others’ thoughts.
At the surface level, even the concept of God is a tool to
overcome fear. In times of uncertainity, the fragile human mind is incapable of
drawing strength from within to overcome the fear that creates the uncertainity,
sadly we are hardly trained to do this. And the concept of God with its
multitudes of representation through light and sound (I mean pictures/images and
hymns/songs) gives man the ‘shoulder to lean on’, so to say.
The ideal state is to fear nothing, a fearless man is a dangerous man. However, it is impossible to overcome every one of our fears. We could make a start. As a child, when we we enter this world, this strange new place from the confort of a mother’s womb we fear everything. The light hurts our eyes, the sound irritates our ears. In a way, all of us ‘grow up’ by conquering small and big fears over our lifetime.
Kamal Hassan was absolutely on the money in ‘Thenali’ with
his ‘bayam’ concept. When you identify the cause of the ‘bayam, it takes a bit
of strength to teach yourself not to fear. Once you do that, lo and behold,
your mind is free. And as Morpheus illustrates to Neo in the Matrix, ‘everybody
falls the first time’, so it is not easy.
Put this idea into your mind – find the fear that is causing
you discomfort, understand why the fear exists in the first place. This
thinking process resolves 75% of the fear. The rest 25% is the action you take
to either temporarily or permanently ward off that fear. Once we start
addressing our fears, we find the way to the all elusive ‘inner-peace’. A calm
mind is the greatest source of strength. Be wary of the laziness towards
thinking, if you do not start the thinking process you still be living an
unevolved, peace-less, troubled life. And while thinking about the fear, here’s
a clue – be truthful to oneself. Here is the concept in simple words – truth overcomes
fears.
So, find your fears, be truthful to oneself and overcome
your fears. Everything else will fall in place!
PS: I just realized that watching ‘Dawn of Man’ segment of 2001-Space Odyssey inspired my creative juices to come up with this blog!
