Fear is everywhere. It is a constant in life. Fears can be big things like phobias or small things like anxieties or worries. Whether big or small there is not a single person living that has not experienced some type of fear. I think that people are born fearful. The 'default' of our lives is fear, not hope.
This could have something to do with survival. Early people's main goal in life was surviving. They relied on fear to keep them cautious, and alive. Being too hopeful and adventurous could end badly. Maybe this same instinct is still part of our lives today.
It's easy for us to worry, we quickly indulge our fears and they often snowball into something much bigger. That's why worries are always so prominent in our lives
Because fear is a natural state for us, we have to work extra hard to hold on to hope. Hope doesn't snowball the way that fear does, when you find hope you have to keep hold of it and focus on it or fear will overcome you again.
In this way, hope is not much more than a device that we use to help us ignore fear. Lets say I forgot to study for the huge math final. I am fearful that I will fail the test, or the class, and my gpa will drop, and I won't get accepted to college... etc. Fear snowballs when you listen to it. I can say that I am hopeful that the test will be easy, or that it will be delayed but I know that those things won't happen.
This is false hope, it's very improbable that the test will get delayed but I still decide to think that it will. The only reason I'm hoping this is because I don't want to think about fear, and bad things that could happen. I am ignoring my fear by focusing on hope.
Even if hope only exists to balance fear out, we still need both hope and fear in our lives. In Lord of the Flies by William Goldng, the stranded boys rely on hope and fear in everything they do. Letting either of these emotions control them is a major setback. While on the island, Ralph sees a ship passing(Golding, 65). He becomes extremely hopeful for rescue until he notices that their smoke signal is out and that the ship won't find them. Suddenly all that hope is gone and he gets really angry at the other boys. He let hope control him too much and it ended with a letdown.
The most feared thing on the island is the beast. The beast controls everything that the boys do and when they do it. Any time they stop to think about the beast they get scared and stop working on hunting and the fire. Dwelling on fear sets them back and makes them forget their purpose. Piggy says: "The thing is-fear can't hurt you any more than a dream." The boys know it's silly to think about the beast but they end up doing it anyway.
Hanging on to hope or fear too closely drowns out your view of the more important things.
There is also lots of hope and fear involved in change. In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart there is lots of rapid change, so lots of conflicting hope and fear. Villagers are fearful that new Christian settlers will take over their town and change their traditions. Their fear drives them to give a 'cursed' plot of ground to the settlers, to build a church.
They are very hopeful that the new church will be cursed, but the hope does not last long. The church remains uncursed and fear takes over again. The fear of the settlers drives the villagers to do something drastic, the curse. They let their fear have too much influence over them and it made them do bad things.
In All the Kings Horses by Kurt Vonnegut, the main character is driven by his hopes and fears. He is responsible for the lives of his family and friends. He is fearful of losing someone he loves, so when the opportunity to save all but one is seen, he has to take it. He becomes very hopeful that he can win, and protect almost everyone, that he takes a huge risk. He chooses to ignore the fear of losing one child by focusing on the hope that he can save everyone else. The hope is shielding him from what he is actually doing, killing his son.
So, like many things, hope and fear are good in moderation. Letting either of them consume you is dangerous, it keeps you from really seeing clearly. We need both hope and fear to balance each other out because the strength of either one alone is dangerous.
Here comes a super long quote that is a long passage from Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. It's about detachment and how it relates with significant fear. When you talk about Hope being a way to disconnect from Fear, I immediately thought of i ti. I'll see you on the other side, if you make it!
ReplyDelete"“What I’m doing now is detaching myself from the experience.”
Detaching yourself?
“Yes. Detaching yourself. And this is important – not just for someone like me, who is dying, but for someone like you, who is perfectly healthy. Learn to detach.”
…
But wait, I said. Aren’t you always talking about experiencing life? All the good emotions, all the bad ones?
“Yes.”
Well, how can you do that if you’re detached?”
“… detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience *penetrate* you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you *fully*. That’s how you are able to leave it.
…
Take any emotion – love for a woman, or grief for a loved one…. if you hold back on the emotions – if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them – you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.
But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. … I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.”
…
“Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely – but eventually be able to say, ‘All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I’m not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I’m going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I’m going to experience them as well.” – p.104"
Does it make sense? Your conclusion talks about, in essence, Moderate people. Maybe temperate, moderate people are those who are best able to detach when necessary.
Thanks for bringing in Kurt Vonnegut. That always makes my day!
Thanks for making me think and make brand new connections. You rock!