When do you feel afraid? Crossing a dark alley? At night, running from the bathroom to your room, alone in your house? Some people would say they're terrified before exams and stuff like that, but I don't mean that kind of nervous fear, I mean the crippling, cold, terrifying one. The one that comes from within your mind, that freezes your limbs and makes you feel your own heart.
There are two great types of fear. Irrational fears, phobias and rational fears I don't have any phobias, and neither do I understand them. My sister freezes completely with spiders. My girlfriend with rats. I don't understand why; it seems to me you can rationalize what to do when faced against such small creatures. However, it IS considered an irrational fear, so maybe trying to understand it is the only thing that is wrong here.
Moving on to rational fears, you can define them as an emotion that arises from our perception of risk towards ourselves. It is an interesting thing, isn't it? Even when the danger lies solely in our imagination, we can still feel afraid. That's why people love watching horror movies or play scary games. I can't tell you how scared I was watching The Conjuring or playing Outlast. Not only did I jump, scream and held on to the closest person to me at the time, but after we were done watching/playing, I was still scared and went around the house checking for monsters. I know this sounds silly, but I'm not afraid of admitting that at 21 years of age, a damn movie scared the shit out of me! Even though it's an imaginary story that we are being told, when we are imersed in it, all the emotions come alive. It's a thrilling sensation, and one of the reasons why I love watching horror movies.
Well, anyway, I remembered this post because of a story I read, Anansi's Goatman Story. It's a very realistic account by a teenager where him and some friends went camping and there was a sort of moster blending in among them. Even though my rational mind knows it's a fake story, there's always that one chance that it is real and that something like that actually happened. Imagining myself in that situation still gives me the creeps, even though it has been months since I've read it. Read it, drop a comment on what you think about it.
Now, my question to you on a previous post was "why are we afraid of death". This relates to why you are afraid of anything. My answer to it is quite simplistic: we are all afraid of the unknown. What we don't know may represent a risk for us, hence it causes fear. We are afraid of dying because we don't know what will happen when we close our eyes for the last time. Will the Christian's Heaven and Hell greet us? Will a paradise with 72 virgins welcome us? Or will nothing be there for us? And we will simply cease to exist? We are afraid of the dark because we have no idea what is lurking in the depths.
When we know what we are facing, we can come up with plans, strategies, ways to tackle our problems. But when the unknown faces us, when the realm of possibilities extends far beyong our own imagination, it is then that we are terrified beyong any logical argument.
Hoping I didn't scare you,
David
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