Fear: Friend and Foe
We can find all kinds of admonishments not to let fear rule our lives and advice on conquering fear within popular culture. No one should let their life be paralyzed by fear. However, defining fear as, false evidence appearing real is unwise. It is an oversimplification.
I have been known to be very black or white in my perceptions but as it pertains to fear I think that fear is both. The trick is discerning the nature of our fear in a given situation. Fear is your foe when it is rooted in a desire to avoid change or challenge. For example, I avoided blogging for quite sometime against the advice of many people because I was afraid that my writing weaknesses would show. I know it is shameful but true none the less. Subject verb agreement, floating particles and spelling, ugh, they scared me. So I hid behind the mantra that English was not my "native" language because of my African ancestry. I simply refused to "master" the language of a colonial power as if it was a sacrilege. Until I realized that avoiding the challenge of writing was hindering my success. That avoidance was nurturing within me the development of the three habits of highly ineffective people: procrastination, disorganization and laziness.
If fear on one hand can render us ineffective thus being our foe, how then can it on the other hand it be our friend? - Well, because fear will signal us about danger, if we listen. Human intuition is powerful and involves being tuned into yourself and your environment. When one is aware of the connection between them self, others and earth they are much more likely to listen to signals both positive and negative received about events occurring around them. As it pertains to fear specifically, in the book, The Gift of Fear the author Gavin De Becker notes that some women who had been raped by an attacker that they saw before the attacked commenced felt fear or a sense on uneasiness before the attacked commenced. Many of these women also reported that they didn’t remove themselves from the situation even when they had a chance to do so because they didn’t want to appear rude or didn't believe that the feelings was real. It is sad but society has taught us to ignore friendly fear as if it is the same as the foe fear. Though my example is anecdotal it seems unwise to conquer this type of fear in the same way as foe fear. Instead, friendly fear should be used as a signal to keep us safe. Kenny Rogers said it best " know when hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away and know when to run". Each of us must figure out when fear is keeping us safe and when it is keeping us stagnant.
P.S. Yes, stereotypes and culture norms impact how we view, feel about, and respond to people, which can make them very dangerous. If one has been taught that say "purple women" are rapist then the fear alarm will sound when any purple woman is around. Conversely, this would lead to the fear alarm being silenced for people of other colors and genders because "purple women" are rapists. Thus, rendering people unable to acess friendly fear properly because in realty rapists come in all colors and genders.
