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Fear of the Unknown

August 27, 2012

They say if you are receptive and open minded enough, then every minute of your life offers great opportunities to learn a lesson or two. Yesterday's opportunity came through the most unexpected quarters.... A cat.... Yeah yeah yeah..... My love for animals knows no boundaries. I bond with them all (well, as long as they are not planning on having me for breakfast, lunch, dinner or any in-between meals). So, where did I meet this cat?

Remember the lady whose story I shared with you in my last post? Well, I'd gone to check on her this weekend and while we were having a chit chat outside in her garden, her Molly cat came to join us. Naturally, I lifted her on my shoulder to stroke her (just to hear her purring; I love the sound they make when they do that) but in the case of this cat, I think this move surprised the purr out of her. The end result was that I got some deep cat-scratches on my chest; I guess this means no showing my chest for the next one week or so...(as usual, digress.)

As crazy as this may sound, my first thought when this happened was "Poor cat! She must have been too shocked when I held her because she's probably used to being kicked around at home...." Maybe she thought I had invented a new kind of kick, and as she run away meowing, I wished I could speak "cat" just to understand what had been going on in her small feline mind. All I had wanted to do was give this cat a nice fassage; rub her tiny head/face, her coat, her stomach, etc with an aim of making her relax. Instead, she freaked out and decided to ran away, leaving me with scratch marks in her wake.

Human beings are no different from this cat; we like staying within the confines of our comfort zone and when this zone is "threatened", by something unfamiliar, we become aggressive. We may not scratch our way out, but we definitely view any change with suspicion and trepedition. We don't embrace it easily and where possible, we fight it to the very end, not giving room to positive thoughts such as "this change could make things better for me...." All because of fear... Fear of the unknown.

We all find ourselves in situations like these, but before we waste precious time and strength fighting them, we need to remember one simple fact: Life is too short to let fear make big decisions for you. You might be hesitating to follow your heart in a new relationship because your last one was abusive and stressful; you might be afraid of taking that major step in your life, the step of marriage, simply because you've heard from others that it's tough and unpredictable; you might be afraid of relocating to a new country and starting life all over again because you fear you might not succeed in that foreign land; you know you have out grown your current job for it offers you no new challenges but you are afraid of getting a new one (or starting a business instead) for fear of meeting new and unknown challenges; and the fears go on....

Just to offer you some encouragement and motivation, the next time you are tempted to let your fear of the unknown make major decisions for you remember Maya Angelou's words: "Someone was hurt before you, wronged before you, hungry before you, frightened before you, beaten before you, humiliated before you, raped before you… yet, someone survived… You can do anything you choose to do....", as long as you overcome your fear.

Remember, FEAR is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real.

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Just my line of thought this week. Fear of the unknown keeps us on the same spot, even when we know we ought to move on.sometime back I had an image post on my wall where a chameleon or lizard..(cant really remember which) was hanging on crocodile's teeth then the engravings were "Fear makes us hold on to the craziest things" and crazy enough we do the same thing.

I like the illustration you have given...either way, whether it was the lizard or the chameleon, the fact that it was holding onto the Croc's teeth is just crazy! What was the fear about, because if you ask me, the Croc is quite scary in itself! Anyway, fear is something we all need to kick out of our systems. Sometimes, some of the things we fear are just in our minds - the reality of the ground is something very different. Just last week, I found out that a certain device I have been wanting to buy is actually very cheap, but because of my fear of its price, all these years I have had to do manually what the device would have been doing for me 100 times faster....... And so it is with our lives in general.

When life gives us something that makes us feel afraid, that is when life gives as the opportunity to be brave.

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