A look at fear: Birds to Iraq war to failure

Fear. It tightens your chest as you attempt to inhale, sends your heartbeat into a race with an unknown enemy and makes you sweat without a calorie’s worth of physical exertion.

I began to examine fear as a motivating factor when the thought of life after college finally entered my consciousness last fall. My fears of having nothing to do after graduation — linked to the ever-popular fear of failure — found their way into my thoughts constantly.

It was then that I realized just how powerful a player fear can be in our lives. There are many things I do not do because I fear their consequences, and perhaps the only reason I ever do anything is because I fear the consequences of not doing it. Fear obviously plays an important role in life-altering decisions like post-graduation plans, but it also has dramatic effects in seemingly inconsequential situations. For instance, I have a fear that the raccoons in the north of campus will maul me one night while walking back from my car and that I will be next on the face transplant list.

While fears can be very personal, I wanted to know about some of the obvious and not-so-obvious fears of others, even if it was just to remind myself that we all experience it. I asked some of my friends what they are afraid of. Here are some of their responses.

“I’m afraid of the dark, especially when I’m home alone. I will sit and watch Law and Order and CSI for hours, but as soon as the lights go out, I think there’s someone hiding in my closet or in the bathroom. I am the master of freaking myself out, with anything from the heat turning on to the wind blowing a tree against my window turning into any number of off-the-wall possibilities.”

“Right now I think my number one fear centers on my boyfriend’s possible deployment to Iraq someday. Even though it’s not something that could happen tomorrow, it’s always at the back of my mind the way things are these days. I think this fear doesn’t necessarily affect my everyday [life], but it is something I think about with regards to my future plans and the possible posts we could go to, considering that if he deploys I will be living there alone. It’s a scary thought to be in love with someone who could deploy and God forbid never come back. … I also have become more active than I ever have before in regards to speaking my views on the war in Iraq and our need to withdraw some if not all of our military presence there.”

“Oversleeping important events — at Rice I used to place a pot over the alarm clock on test days so I would stub my finger and wake up when I reached for the off button.”

“Silence, especially when it’s just me and one other person who is a friend but not a really close friend. … I’m always worried that the other person dislikes silence and finds it awkward. And if it’s someone I want to hang out with for longer, I’m worried that if the conversation teeters down, that will serve as the natural point for them to say, ‘Well, I guess I should be heading out now.’”

“I’m afraid of birds. Sometimes it’s not a big deal, sometimes it’s debilitating. The other day I needed to get gas and I actually left one station because there were hundreds of birds lining the electrical wires, and I was too scared to get out of my car for fear of imminent death.”

“I am afraid of failure. Failure ranging from failing out of school to not meeting my expectations or goals to still living at home at 40 with my parents — and with an obesity problem because I eat too much chocolate to make myself feel better about my failed life.”

Fear obviously dictates our actions and our inactions. It is at least interesting and at most meaningful to think about one’s own fears and their consequences.

What are you afraid of?

Noorain Khan is a Martel College senior.

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