Why do we want to live a life without fear? It seems almost everywhere I read another person talking about how we need to get rid of our fear, we need to squash it, shove it in some corner, or just hope that it falls into some deep abyss.
Fear keeps us safe (see Inside Out as soon as you can). Fear makes us feel alive. Fear helps us protect our loved ones. Fear helps us do many things. So why do we want to be fearless?
I believe we want to be fearless because we have no idea how to handle fear. That we become overwhelmed with it, it destroys us, and then we think, “Oh, let’s just get rid of it!”
I think the more effective solution is to learn how to use our fear to help us. Emotions are some of the most powerful tools that we have as humans, and fear is a very powerful emotion. If we pretend that it doesn’t exist, it will still exist but be uncontrollable. If we allow its presence, we can use fear to reveal to us what we hold most dear in our lives and cherish it for the role it uniquely plays in the survival of our species.