Fear is uncomfortable, even to the brave. The discomfort can invoke anxiety or motivation in us causing us to act against or in line with that fear. Many tend to wish, pray or run away from the causes of fear instead of wishing, praying or gathering strength to stand and overcome that fear.

If fear could always be wished or prayed away, the world would have been full of extremely weak and underdeveloped people. By Nimroth Gwetsa, 31 May 2022.

We do not wake up feeling brave and thinking we can face all our threats that increase our fears and anxieties. We learn through experience that some things ought not to be feared. Sometimes our experience is limited and our discomfort with future unknowns is what increases our restlessness as though the issue or situation is unprecedented. The situation may be unique and the first to occur to us, but it may not be so to someone else.

Our rational mind likes playing tricks on us, making us believe our situation is unique and unlike that which others have overcome. Had we believed in the adage that “nothing is new under the sun” and that our situation may be like that of others known to us, we would have leveraged their solutions, overcoming our challenges causing fear in us.

Instead, fear tends to be exaggerated in our minds making us lose hope of success in overcoming it. Hence desperation tends to set in, causing some to consider anything, even the unthinkable and irrational, hoping it will be a solution to problems they face. For this reason, we should not be too quick to judge them, but seek to understand and find ways of helping them.

But seeking understanding rather than judging is hard work and forces us to be others centered. It may also require suspending judgement on defining perpetrators and victims. Defining challenges by victims and perpetrators happens quite easily. In so doing, we know that the required solution would be to pass judgement to the perpetrator and not have to worry about it thereafter.

But putting oneself in someone’s shoes means suspending judgement and considering other possibilities. That consideration requires energy to be expended, and that energy is scarce and a luxury to be expended on someone else when you, yourself, have many issues you too are struggling or faced with. It really takes sacrifice and generosity to being others centered.

Fear encourages the spirit of victimhood. And with victimhood, we do not have to do anything but expect change to come from others or those deemed perpetrators. Often, such a stance would be valid and acceptable because perpetrators and/ or their beneficiaries may have greatly caused many to be victims and precipitated a legacy of victimhood.

But even then, considering victims remain anything but victims, it would have to be victims pulling themselves from the woeful to a better situation. Unless transformed by some divine intervention of some sort, perpetrators would not suddenly grow a conscience, becoming saints and helping victims live better.

The best they could do is do the barest minimum to clear their conscience but would never enable the victim to surpass them in their social standing or other human development measure. Humans always strive for survival and comfort. Sometimes many see that survival through ascendancy to the top of the human development chain, even if in the depravity of human development, such ascendancy comes at the suppression of others.

Whether a perpetrator or victim, at the center of our underdevelopment is improperly managed fear. Such improperly managed fear causes others to sink into depression, victimhood or outright savages.

I do not know about you, but I do not think human beings were designed to live well by thriving on the demise and suffering of others. Such cannot be normal life. Something in you would have to die, for such a life to be normalised.

Nevertheless, such normalisation is made possible by fear, be it the fear of loss, pain, or suffering.

When fear is used positively to spur one to increase one’s capacity, fear then becomes useful. I want to believe if increasing capacity were our natural reaction to the first encounter with fearful situations, we would be far ahead in our development. Fear in this instance becomes a warning for us to not adopt business as usual stance and activities in tackling that aspect of life for which fear was raised.

Fear then becomes our “guardian angel” warning us to take extraordinary steps to face the challenge to overcome it. And when the obstacle or hindrance is overcome, we would increase our performance because the next recurrence of the same situation would be easily resolved.

Regular overcoming of fear in this fashion would then create and increase our bravery. We would find comfort in discomfort knowing we can always overcome it if we do not succumb to fear. The inclination to suppress or deprive others would be unnecessary because we would know that better opportunities lie in overcoming challenges than solving problems through suppression and deprivation of others.

We need more people to see fear for what it is, that it is an enemy of human development progress and a tool for creating perpetrators and victims. We thus need more people to overcome fear by increasing their capacity and applying it to problems experienced. The more we do this, the better we will become.

Do not let fear hinder your success.