Fear is just an overused tool.

And there’s another one.

These deep, helpful insights just keep dropping.

What I realized is that fear is just a sensation.

Like a dark wave, apparently slowing down for a while (TOO long, obviously), before it moves on and disappears again.

It’s merely a feeling, a fleeting physical appearance.

But it’s not really connected to something that’s not there yet.

Fear is just an energetic shift.

It FEELS important, like the first sign of things to come, but that’s simply cleverly embedded in the experience.

It feels like ‘Start looking around NOW!’ and it feels like ‘I have to run away RIGHT THIS FUCKING MOMENT!’, but it’s not a warning.

It’s not about the future.

How could it foresee and know?

Fear is a standalone thing.

Fear is hardly ever a real and useful heads-up, something that’s supposed to keep us from a pending disaster: it just feels like that.

Uncomfortable, jittery, unclear.

It’s purely a psychological trick with some powerful physical backup.

Fear is the feeling of not knowing.

Fear is the notion of possible nightmares and apparent monsters.

They’re not there, waiting around the corner, but it can feel that way.

It DOES feel that way.

Fear is an autonomous sensation, designed to get us focused, but it’s not a quick glimpse into the future.

Most often, fear is what the mind uses when it can’t predict what will happen next, tomorrow, or years from now.

And to keep us safe from that big dark hole in its predictions, it will scare us, so we stay where we are.

It’s actually really smart.

It will try and keep us away from the unknown, no matter what that is or whether it even exists or not.

That’s why it’s so treacherous: it can grab our attention and occupy our awareness instantly, because it’s created for emergencies.

Not the normal stuff we can beautifully handle.

Not the small crises, the daily hurdles, or even the bigger questions that come up in life.

The mind doesn’t know.

If it can’t predict the next scene, or the next situation, it will make us feel anxious.

It wants to protect us from its own incompetent ideas about the future.

So fear is mostly a mistake, an attempt to save us by a mind that doesn’t know.

An amazing tool that is just seriously overused.

Don’t hate it.

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(Photo by @alexmihu, for Unsplash)