Fear is the Mind Killer

"Only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

I’ll admit that I’ve lived my life in fear. The excuse has always been that caution of the neurotic, the anxious imperative which says that I must take the safe road. It is better to be safe than sorry. But I am now of a different point of view. To be safe is often what makes one sorry. Being safe is often what causes one’s fear to be realized. I believe that is what Nietzsche meant when he said: “The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius!”

We are all destined to die. This is a fact that we all know. No matter how much we distract ourselves from this fact, it exists as a form of stress in the background. It exists as a kind of phantom of the mind, lurking and waiting to assail us in our weakest moments. It exerts power over us. No matter how aware we are of this fact it still manages to burrow itself into our minds in our weakest moments. It is better not to think about death, many say to themselves.

But this attitude is a form of resignation and surrendering to fear. It is not a healthy surrender to the inevitability of death. There is, in my opinion, another way. To acquaint oneself with the inevitability of death. To become accustomed to the idea of death and to see in the universe a benevolent force that requires death in order for life to exist. We have no facts about death. There is no legitimate knowledge as to the experience of death, except for those who are resuscitated (I’d argue such people were not really dead).

So, we form an opinion on death, which, when you really think about it carefully, has absolutely no factual basis to it. There is no evidence at all that we know a single thing about death. So, why form a negative view of death? Why think of death as a negative at all? What does have a factual basis? We know that energy is not destroyed but transformed. This gives us a factual basis upon which to develop a more positive view of death. Is death an end? We don’t know. So, we shouldn’t make presumptions about it as though we do.

Returning to the subject of fear, fear is in many ways tied to death. We fear the future, not the past. The future is uncertain and therefore a source of fear. But I would argue this: your fears are much more likely to be realized if you live in a state of fear. Fear is an evolutionary mechanism which has become maladaptive in many ways in modern society. In paleolithic times, an infection could mean the end of your life. Now we have antibiotics. If your appendix bursts, you can be rushed to the hospital and treated. Fear, in many ways, has become maladaptive.

Fear will always be an important survival mechanism. But in society today it has reached a point where fear is a dominant force that deludes us into thinking that going against the status quo, or doing something that is socially unacceptable or strange, is something to genuinely be feared. You have the power to change the course of another person’s life entirely if you overcome your fear for just a moment. All it takes is one brief instant of courage to create a great ripple in the world.

Not only this, but you can change yourself. You can take just that one step that you have always been afraid to take. And you might find with a sweet and relieved delight that everything else takes care of itself afterwards. The first step is the hardest, but there is so much fulfillment after it. So, build your cities on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Allow yourself to be free of fear. Don’t worry so much. Your worries will die with you, as will your deeds, but you will remember your deeds and not your worries.