Fear

This image of a book gives me a sort of anxiety, this corner that is looming at me, the two big walls that are about to crush me, as I hyperventilate cornered with no place to run to as fear spreads all over me and all my rational mind evaporates. Of course, you could say the big EVIL word isn’t helping either and you would be right! 

What is it about fear that we cannot put our hands on? Why do we have it?  How does it get created in us? What triggers it? And more importantly, how do we get rid off it? Or do we ever?

It plagues us all under one form or another and we all go on quietly with our lives as our monster within unleashes its full fire and fury on us (I know I used a Trump example here) hoping that if we could just hold on a moment longer it will just disappear, but it doesn’t and if we don’t address it, it seems to actually get even bigger!  That bugger!

I, for one, have my own inner monster, one I got acquainted with rather recently and I must say it troubles me a lot. Enough to have to write a blog about it and enough to try and understand what Sartre has to say about it.

Salander

 "The threat to inflict pain can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain." 

I don't remember where I read this but I remember that I was in my first year of college.  At the time I had a constant fear: I imagine one day I would be called by the dean (a very cleaver, tall woman) who would look at me through her thick glasses and say: "I am so sorry, we've made a mistake, you don't belong here.  Take your stuff and go back to your village."

During the first couple of months at that Women's college I realized that I wasn't like most of the girls there.  But at the same time I was told that diversity is a good thing, everybody is or wants to be different (like everybody else, as my good friend and roommate used to say).  But diversity to a point, I thought, and my point (social  class and financial situation) was much lower than where it should have been.  So during that first year I avoided talking about my hometown, about the friends I left behind and especially about my parents whom I thought as uneducated and if not stupid, for sure, pretty naive.  In simple words I was ashamed of my upbringing.  So during that time I imagined fear as a shadow that followed me around and my job was to make sure that no one else saw that shadow.  I thought that as far as no one knew of my fear or that shadow, I was save.  A year later I was taking a philosophy class with Amelie Rorty, an amazing professor and very alert bright mind & soul.  The first day of class, she said to the class: "Leave your fears out and come in."  I was horrified.  She saw through me! She saw my fear, my monster! I thought and then: "Wait a minute, do others students have fears too?

My father, a man who has no formal education, but loves reading, often asks me whenever I admit that I am afraid:  "Can you please tell me how does your fear look now?  Describe it/him/her for me.  If I'll give you a camera, can you take a photo of it/him/her?"  In other words he is asking me to make my fear real, physical, because he believes that once I do that then I’ll be able to deal with it/him/her as equal to equal.

But, of course, it's hard to give body and soul to all of our fears, over the years I am getting better in doing so but fears are like bacteria; grow very very very fast!

I like to imagine that if Sartre was here and we were to ask him about fear/s he would have given us a lecture about fear and freedom.  Both words star with an f and perhaps that's not pure coincidence.

Alice

“A situation provokes fear if there is a possibility of my life being changed from without; my being provokes anguish to the extent that I distrust myself and my own reactions in that situation,”  Being and Nothingness, Sartre

So Sartre tells us actually what we feel is not just fear but it's comprised of fear and anguish. Anguish as in anxiety as well as fear, one precedes the other so fear of something, which then propels anguish and anxiety on us which then accelerates even more our fear.  I had never dissected fear like this before. For me it's always a big mysterious blob that cannot really be described other than it is not stagnant, but swirly and chaotic and dark colored and sort of round shaped and malleable sort of, not so as a rock but more like jello.  But reading now Sartre I think I know what he means.  In a way the anguish is almost the worst part of it, because it anticipates and our anticipation for this reason it's always worst than the reality, so it triggers all our senses into fight or flight mode, mostly flight, for me, unfortunately hence a sense of feeling trapped ensues and sends me on a whirlwind of emotions. 

Of course, the scholars are saying, including the Buddhists, that we are not our feelings. Our feelings are just outcomes of some hormones and neurons and really have their own lives going on and all we have to do is not pay too much attention to them. We are still WE without them. Difficult one to swallow for me as all I am are feelings.  I believe that what we feel is who we are essentially and everything else is just taught and so not us per say but we include it in our lives to make our lives easier.  But if we start thinking that our feelings are not really us than what is us? What else is left in there?  How can we separate our feelings from us? If, for instance, we can separate the bad feelings, (anguish, fear etc), that means we have to separate the good ones as well?  And can we live a life without feelings?  What would that look like?  Or even mean as humans?  What will our existence be like or mean then?  How do we find purpose for our existence then?

Salander

Purpose is reached through hope or maybe there is another way but I still haven't figured that out.  But, of course, fear and hope are not often linked together.  So my question is this: how do we get from fear to hope in order to find our purpose or in order to overcome our negative feelings like fear, despair etc.

One way I think it’s by going back to the source.  In other words going back to where we have first felt that negative/positive feeling.  In other words, digging deeper and deeper inside the self.   I think Descartes said something like "conquer yourself rather than the world" and perhaps that's where our purpose and hope in life lies but I would agree with Salander for now, because I, also, cannot be apart from my feelings.  Life without feelings, without passion is not the kind of life existentialists would have promote, I think.  And a passionate life filled with feelings, I would want to think, it's the kind of life most of us want to lead.  If life is a short vacation of non-existence (as once, a very long time ago, I bluntly described it), then existence should be treated as an one-of-a-kind opportunity to travel to the most engaging/captivating places possible.

Alice