My Biggest Fear

“What is your biggest fear?” This was a security question that I had to provide an answer for when I was signing up for my email account, so that I could recover my password easily if I were to ever forget it. At the time I didn’t think much of the question. I just wrote down “heights,” figuring that if it was the first thing that came to mind now, it would be the first thing to come to mind when if I ever needed to recover my password. This, however, is an age old question. What makes us afraid? And what role does fear play in motivating us?

This guy is obviously not afraid of heights...

When it comes down to it, humans are rational creatures. Like any other animal, we seek to maximize the pleasure in our lives and minimize the pain. A rational human being would, first and foremost, want to live and be alive. However, I am not entirely comfortable with making this statement. I would then have to assume that pain to humans is equated with death, with varying degrees of severity. This is not always true as it fails to take into account the richness of character that humans possess. People can feel emotional pain, as well as sympathy and empathy for others. These are all things that can be considered undesirable. Therefore I cannot say that the root of fear is death, although it is true in many cases. There is something even deeper, even more conclusive, that I believe is our greater fear.

If only fear could be described as simply as this...

I read a book recently that was a child’s firsthand account of his battle with cancer. One of the most striking lines in the book was spoken by a friend this child had met in the hospital. When confronted with the fact that he might die, the friend responded by saying “I’m not afraid of death, I’m afraid of dying.” This was really surprising to me. Aren’t these two concepts the same thing? Isn’t dying just a process leading to death? But then I realized what he was talking about. He was not afraid of death because it’s just a emptiness; he figured he wouldn’t even know he was dead. He was afraid of the process of it all, of being plunged into the unknown, taken away from everything that he was familiar with. I had figured it out: our greatest fear is what we don’t know; it’s uncertainty.

FDR once said that the “only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” But what exactly is fear, if not the culmination of everything that we don’t know, that we don’t understand, that is uncertain? What is fear, but the future? Kant says that the reason it is so hard for people to break the bonds of immaturity is because they’re so comfortable with a life of being told what to do, how to live, and how to think. The reason we’re so comfortable being such a conformist species is because following others gives us guidelines and guarantees, things that are certain. This is why we feel the need to make social contracts, to have laws and societies. We need to feel safe, and the only way to feel safe is if through order and the removal of as much uncertainty as possible.

Unjustified terror? More like unknown terror.

Kant claims that we become enlightened when we “have courage to use [our] own understanding.” It is not a coincidence that he characterizes the use of free thought with being courageous. It’s a scary thing to have to rely on ourselves, to tackle the things that we don’t know without any guidance or support. Furthermore, Kant says that if we fail in our attempts to walk alone, we will be frightened out of further attempts. I also consider this fear of failure to be a fear of the unknown, as it is uncertain whether or not we will succeed. But how are we then to be truly enlightened, to emerge fully from our immaturity? The entire process of human development is characterized by fear of the unknown. Children are attached to their parents because it is the only thing that they are certain of. When they start to stray from the nest in an attempt to discover the unknown for themselves, they become adolescents. And finally, after a thorough amount of life experiences, when enough of the unknown becomes known, they become adults.

There is still, however, uncertainty in everyone’s life, regardless of age or enlightenment. Even the most enlightened and most thoughtful person cannot control one thing: the future. Even though I am technically an adult trying to make my own way through the world, I have never been more afraid in my life. My future has always been one giant unknown variable but I’ve always viewed it as something that I’ll figure out “another time.” Well that time has come, the time to make the decisions that will impact me for life. It’s time to make decisions about the classes I’m going to take, the disciplines that I’m going to study, the job that I might be able to get, and the lifestyle that I will eventually live. According to Kant, I should not be afraid to make the decisions that I truly believe in. But part of me can’t help but wish that I had someone telling me what to do, whether it was a parent telling me what type of job I should get in the future, or an academic adviser telling me what type of disciplines would be best suited for me, or even a peer telling me which classes to avoid. At least I could use some of their experiences to help me unravel part of the uncertainty.

But another part of me wants to believe that all this uncertainty is part of the beauty of life. Kant says that we do not live in an enlightened age, but that we do live in an “age of enlightenment.” I think this classification is universal to any time period; we never stop discovering ourselves, no matter what stage of life we are in. We’ll never really know it all. We are always exploring and learning, becoming more and more enlightened. Maybe that’s the beauty of it all, that our fears add excitement to our lives. Maybe we need to embrace the uncertainty and channel it into liveliness. Maybe that’s what part of true enlightenment is, to live freely, not only from the guidance of others, but from the fears of tomorrow.

"We just have to do the best we can with the knowledge we have."

Tower Climbers Working. 2010. Web. 28 Nov 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A_h2AjJaMw>.

FDR's First Inaugural Speech. 2009. Web. 28 Nov 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amNpxQANk0M>.

"The Importance of Certainty." DET-CMS. Center for Applied Motivation Inc., n.d. Web. 28 Nov 2012. <http://www.det.wa.edu.au/detcms/school-support-programs/gifted-and-talented/teachers/resources-and-links/eager/related-research-articles/the-importance-of-certainty.en?oid=MultiPartArticle-id-2001047>.

Kant, Immanuel. "What is Enlightenment?." theliterarylink.com. The Literary Link, n.d. Web. 28 Nov 2012. <http://theliterarylink.com/kant.html>.

Watterson, Bill. Calvin and Hobbes. N.d. Comic Strip. Sbnation.comWeb. 28 Nov 2012. <http://cdn2.sbnation.com/imported_assets/1025956/cal_hobb-raccoon9.jpg>.