This is just something to think about today. Its Monday and with all the anxiety building for this election, I can see where my prolonged discussion on this topic of ‘fear’ is coming from.
But nonetheless…
Have you ever stopped yourself from doing something simply because of fear?
Last week I drew on this thought by Franklin D. Roosevelt, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Very simple and direct. But sometimes the simplest things says a lot.
What he was really saying is that our fears will only make things worse. I briefly contemplated this subject and I conceived a basic philosophy about fear… about what it really is and how it manifest itself in our lives and I thought:
“There is no definite explanation to what we fear. Fear is simply what we do not know.”
To support this philosophy, I looked at some famous quotes that more evenly connects the dots:
“Fear is the the only enemy born of ignorance…” Edward Albert.
Averroes, a medieval philosopher said almost a thousand years ago, “Ignorance leads to fear…”
And one of my favorite by Arnold H. Glasgow, “Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.”
Its not so much that ignorance causes fear, but what connects these assertions is that ignorance is what prolongs fear – our fears are sustained by what we don’t know.
Standing before a crowd of people, we fear that we are going to fail, but that we don’t truly know and that fear is what makes things worse.
A few years ago, I came across this powerful quote that has lived with me to this day and as I grow older, I begin to realize the truth of it, statement by statement and it goes as follows:
We may be afraid to fail but what if we could just challenge ourselves to realize our true potential?
