A Little Reminder about Fear

I came across this writing by Brianna Wiest:

“Of all the things you can clean and fix in your life, fear is not one of them. It will always be there, a gentle humming undercurrent to whatever it is you do. It can be loud or it can be soft. You can try to hold it back or you can learn to coexist with it, to nod to it as you pull away from the shore. You cannot cleanse yourself from fear, nor should you. It’s how you learn to live in spite of it, the mental strength you develop to listen to your best self, not your most scared one, that will be the point of your evolution. Your fear is not a problem you can fix. It is part of you, as valid as all the rest, that needs to be cared for, and settled with, and slowly quieted over time.”

Fear is an innate feeling, tied to our survival brain; as a result, we are geared to look for danger, both real and perceived. But we can work with fear, we can examine it, question it. We can use curiousity to temper it. We can work to quiet it over time.

Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@justinbissonbeck