Fear is wired permanently in our genes, it had help us survive in the prehistorical period. We know when to run away from danger and when not to risk our life in the wild. People who had strong fear to the hazardous characteristics of mother nature tends to survive and pass along this trait to the next generation. But that was quite a long time ago, where planet Earth is dominated by deadly creatures that could kill in a single bite.
The environment has change drastically since then, we have shelters and great cities. Dangers from nature seems to be under human’s control, apart from occasional natural disaster. Furthermore, we are no longer surrounded by tigers, nor see any lions across the road on our neighbour’s garden. Sure, we can live in the comfort of our home alone forever with enough food. But that’s not our purpose, we have greater things to do.
Unfortunately, there are still many things that we need to do and achieve in life that are left aside, because we are scared. We are scared to follow our dreams seriously. We are scared to fail. We are scared to show people who we really are. We are scared to get want we really want, scared to reject some people from our life. It seems as if, even though physical dangers are minimised, we still have fear. As a result we are stopping our self from creating the potential lives we could be living, because of it.
But there is one thing more realistic and scarier. It is death. The concept itself is already scary to grasp, let alone imagining how it would be like. Death is mankind’s greatest fear. Death is every living things greatest fear. We have evolved perfectly to avoid death, and we are the master of that. Some animals are extremely fast in evading, some have rock-like exoskeleton to protect themselves and some developed a cognitive ability to advanced into greater being – humans.
Since human became self conscious, there was a strife for an explanation after death. Mankind fear the unknown, and it drive them to shine a light on something that can not be explained. They tried to make death less terrifying. This lead to the creation of belief which then developed into religion. They invented mysterious and powerful story. Some believe in the afterlife, and some believe you will end up in heaven when your life on earth ends. These believe seems to works and soothe our fear from the realisation that we are mortal creature.
Nonetheless, human being are just insignificant to the universe. Things will just continue to just exist even if we cease to. Not to say where you stand comparing you to the world. You are, like mankind to the universe, too insignificant comparing to the world we live in. Just like how the universe will continue to go on if human disappear, the world will continue to function even if you are gone.
That is a very dark realisation to visualised, but I am trying to get you somewhere. People, just like you, has their own problem in life more or less then you do. They are too fixated on their own problems as well. What you do really do not matter at all to the people around you. Maybe to your family, but for everyone else you are just indifferent, you are just another side character in their life story.
So why worried about offending someone? Why fear something so laughable comparing to death? Looking from an individual perspective, what is even more scarier than death? I assume there are none. Furthermore, if you are in your mid 30 and will live the world’s average expectancy, 70. You roughly have around 300,000 hours left. Not taking into account all other hazards like accidents and diseases. Remember the time you were a kid, it was like a moment ago. Ask the elders how fast their time had passed by. The time is getting close.
We should use the though of death not to upset us about life, but to shock and wake us up and to pursue the life we are capable of living. Scare yourself everyday, notice how easily friends and family can be gone. Notice how fragile life actually is. Read about the different kinds of diseases and how it could take decades off our lives. Notice how people will move on and became forgotten.
Fear is the greatest obstacles to doing the important things. Always remember what you truly fear, and only then you can be free to go on doing stuff that desperately need your attention.