Walking the Wall

I wonder what it is that makes people seek out fear. Some people love
to be terrified to death on roller coasters that push the limit of
fear, some people climb up cliff faces without any anchors, some people
jump out of airplanes and hurtle at the earth 160mph, some people get
on the backs of insanely large and irritated bulls to see how long they
can hang on, and some people love watching terrifying movies. I don’t
really like roller coasters, and would never get on a bull of any size
or temperament, but I have jumped out of an airplane, and I do love the
occasional scary movie. I wonder why that is. To be honest, I don’t
think I really thought of jumping out of an airplane as adrenaline
seeking (although it shoots up the adrenaline, no doubt), or fear
seeking (although looking down at the ground just before falling out
was terrifying)…it was more about flying to me than falling–so
perhaps I should have tried hang gliding instead, LOL!

Yes, there is the adrenaline rush, but I wonder if some of it isn’t
rooted in the fear itself. I had a lot of fears when I was younger–I
had a much too vivid sense of imagination. Yet alot of my dreams were
about the very things that I feared. Was that because I was terrified
of these things happening, or was it because it was my brains way of
dealing with the things I was afraid of in a setting that I could
control–or at least wake up from. It seems to me that some part of why
we seek out being afraid is that we can be afraid in a controlled
setting, where we have the power to not go on the ride, or not go up in
the plane, or turn of the television–we feel in control in a world in
which there is so little real control. This sortof ties in with
mythologies, in that myths are a peoples way of making sense or dealing
with those things that they don’t understand–or cannot control. People
don’t understand the sea, cannot control it, so they have their myths
of Poisiden and while they still can’t control the sea, they can gain a
sense of control or peace in leaving an offering to him. People fear
where technology will take us, so we have the Matrix to play out our
fears; people fear not knowing just what makes a child into a monster,
and so we have Star Wars; people fear a death that is out of their
control–so we have scary movies galore where people die left and
right.

We know that pain is very important, its a warning system that tells us
that something is wrong so that the body can avoid something or fix
something that couldn’t be avoided. We know that life can be very
difficult for people who don’t feel pain (like leperesy or people born
with congenital insensitivity to pain),
and perhaps fear is the same way. It lets us know that we are alive,
its a wake up call that says “LIVE” all in capital letters. Its an odd
thing fear.

I love Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Light of Stars, that ends with:

O fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know erelong,
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.

It’s not really about fear, so much it is about living and being strong, but maybe that is what fear is telling us to do.