Frowning at Fear

Is there any person on earth, who is not afraid of any thing under the sky? If ever there is one, then I would be tempted to take my hats off to him/her, whoever that be! It is not that I don't believe there can be a person who is completely fearless. We may come across one in a thousand, who can frighten even the worst of all enemies, the death! But I realize that there is nothing more dangerous and more crippling to life than fear, and if we think seriously about what we are afraid of, we may be surprised to know that most often we do not know what we are afraid of. Because once we know what we are afraid of, then the fear takes leave of us immediately.

Often we are frightened of phantoms of our imagination, which have no correspondence to reality outside. In other words, what we are afraid of, are the creation of our imagination! Some may say that the fears have their origin in hallucinations and hallucinogens and phantasmagoria! The words may sound too big, but what they say is this: we create our own phantoms, which threaten to kill us at a time when we are weak and vulnerable. One of the ways how to over come fear is by confronting the phantoms squarely. Ask yourself, what am I afraid of! No vague answers, but direct concrete answers. If this exercise is repeated three times, then the fear may not be there at all.

But we need to face a more vital question: how and why do I create phantoms of my imagination? The answer is rather simple: we cannot face raw reality, because it is too frightening, and life-threatening. We would like to face sugar-coated reality, something that is mild and gentle. So our mind creates phantoms according to our liking, and these phantoms cannot kill us, because they survive on our fear; but they can lead us to situations where we feel helpless and need to fall back on to them. One way of tackling them is, by realizing that they are as frightened of us as we are frightened of them.

Fear of known things and persons are more within the purview of our control, while fear of unknown is something that is more dangerous. The fear of the unknown can strike at a time when the person least expects, and the the consequences could be quite costly. It will be beneficient to think that most of the fear, which are based on unknown persons and things and events, will lead us to some known fear, because we human beings cannot think in a vacuum.

One way how to treat people with fear of any sort is to look at their fears from rational point of view. The very fact that most of the fears are based on irrational, imaginary concoctions, they are easy to tackle. Take for instance, if a person is afraid of ghosts, start analysing this fear: has the person every seen one? when, where and how? has anyone else seen it? These are questions which can make the person realise that the fear was simply the creation of his/her mind. But there is a fear which is not easy to tackle, and it may take quite a while to really overcome: fear of oneself, of one's conscience, of consciousness! But that is an altogether different story!

Setting the World on Fire

If there is one thing that I envy the men and women of yesteryears, it is the fire that they carried with them wherever they went. They were often men and women always ablaze... they were men and women who could dare the impossible, and thank God, the world we live in had been shaped and domesticated by their hard labour. That is precisely what the present generation lacks: a zest for life; a fire that is always aglow, which can burn the ashes the hardest of rocks. The modern advancement in technology has made us timid, fearful, and complacent. A certain amount of mediocrity has set into our daily routines, and that is dangerous to the existence of the very world we live in.

There are fearless men and women in our society, but probably we can count them with our fingers. It may be time for us to pause for a while and think what has made us so timid, and lifeless? In the past, men and women managed to achieve a lot more without proper and adequate means, and today with all the means, we are not able to produce equivalent fruits. What has gone amiss? Why are most of our people are walking corpses? They have neither the enthusiasm nor the motivation, and no wonder they find themselves burden to the universe, and find ways of ending their lives in cowardly acts.

The world needs men and women with fire; the term 'fire-brand' men and women today can be seen only in museums. We had men and women who could stand stand defying the guns and rifles of the British during the Independence movement, and today even a shadow of a tree in the darm is enough to drive us mad. What is left in the world is the ashes of the fire that kept the world alive, and if we keep digging the ashes, we might find ambers, a spark or two, with which we may be able to light up the world anew. To dig the ashes is a dirty job that not many would be willing to comply, but unless we do that, even the ambers that lie quietly for us to find them, may soon vanish into thin air.

Let me present two spiritual persons who had that indomitable zeal to set the world on fire from two different traditions : Swami Vivekananda from India and Saint Francis Xavier from Portugal; there are such amazing parallels between these two gentlemen, the first lived at the end of 20th century, while the latter in the later part of 16th century. While Vivekananda set the Western world on fire, Xavier set the Eastern world on fire... both in their own way. Both of them died more or less at the same age, of 41. The beauty of these men is that their legacy is continued by countless men and women across the globe. The fire that these men ignited continues to burn in the hearts of millions today. Today I need to think I am also called to light up the life of at least one or two in my own surroundings. If all of us were to think so and make it a point to realise that dream before we breathe our last, we can truly be proud of passing that legacy to our posterity.

We have nothing to worry, even if the fire is gone out, because we have a handful of Prometheus, the true fire-brand Greek god, who stole fire from Zeus and gave to humanity. Today our prayer is to these Prometheus is to set our hearts on fire, fire that can ignite the whole world... the words of some of the fire-brand men and women of the past still echoes in my heart and mind : go, set the world on fire! But how can we set the world on fire, if we do not find the fire deep within us? If we are men and women who are burning with zeal and zest, confidence and enthusiasm, we will see that without our knowing we are warming up the world around, and soon see the world brightening up... I finding myself in perfect unison with the world around, and life is so very spectacular and splendid... is this not heaven on earth?