The Holes in Fear

I was in 3rd grade when a Firecracker landed on my leg burning through my skin making it look somewhat like Swiss cheese for a month. After those healed, a sparkler caught my hair on fire. I'm terrified of fireworks, the quiet, and sneezing in the dark. We all have fears, more or less irrational. Like my friend, Beth, whose afraid of centipedes. The only thing I ever really learned in psychology (a subject I am now able to teach) was that humans are wired to fear certain things. Such as snakes, or other animals that will kill or harm us. Its like a hard drive that is installed to make us the fittest so we can survive (this is legit, google it if you don't believe me.) But what makes us afraid of other things, such as why am I afraid to sneeze in the dark? Simple because I don't know whats going to be there to hear it. Make fun all you want, but why are little kids afraid of monsters under their bed when they are in a dark room, because they can't see it.

So I believe # two: We create our own fears & the fears we are dealt, we fuel them to make them larger.

Before I understood all the bad things that could happen in the world, I was one brave bitch. But after having my head bashed in by a wall, a sibling die, my parents sleeping in separate rooms, and a friend commit suicide, it is safe to say I quickly made a shell and crawled inside. And who wouldn't?! At my roommates high school a girl got hit by a car and died, and did the drive stop? You can bet your ass he didn't! Two teenage boys shot up a high school (side note: I want to be a high school teacher), killing 12 kids and starting a new fad across the nation. Anyone could be hiding in someones house, anyone could be carrying a gun. My mom always tells me you should assume the worst, and assume it will happen to you. But by submitting to fear, we create an epidemic, and the source of the fear wins. When the Twin Towers tumbled to the ground on 9/11, the country entered a state of fear that 10 years later we have yet to leave. Being safe and being fearful are two separate things.

So belief # 3 (you lucky son of a gun, 2 beliefs in 1!): I believe we can overcome the fear we create.