Fright

Project Blog It

I suppose it seems appropriate, or perhaps cliché, to write on fright on Halloween. So rather than focus on fright per say, I want to write about fear, something I’ve been thinking about for the past couple of days.

Fear, I think, is never actually fear of anything other than the unknown. There is no real direct object of fear. Insofar as something that we truly believe to cause fear in ourselves is not real, which is certainly open for debate. Instead, I think what we really fear is only the abstract idea of something we do not, or cannot know. It is the unknown that is the object of fear.

We fear death because we do not know what death means for us, or even for those closest to us. We think we know, but really we cannot know.

We might fear snakes or spiders, but really it’s not fear. Rather it’s a sense of creepiness and discomfort.

We might fear heights, but such a fear is more likely the fear of not knowing what it would be like to fall—the fear of not knowing what it’s like to not be in control of ourselves.

My fears derive from the unknown parts of who I am and who I will become. I was a certain kind of person at one time, and kind of person that I valued greatly. I have long hoped that that person will find a way of emerging again, but I do not know if that will happen, and that frightens me. This is not to say that I am unhappy with the person I am today. I am, in fact, very happy. At the same time, I do have ambitions and goals, and I worry that situations, circumstances, and freely made choices have worked against those goals. I do not know though, and therein lies the locus of my fear.

Happy Halloween, everybody.

Please check the blogs listed on the right for companion pieces to this week's prompt.

Next week's prompt: Treat.