fear

[D_Amyntas Lillydong]

if you had no fear what would you do or be in your life?

 

[B_Hickboy]

I'd be dead by now.

 

[purplewhitemajor]

I would be a free soul

 

[nudeyorker]

I think we have to define what most people fear. I have faced most of my fears in life except death and won. I think we are living in a time of extreme anxiety and we are equating fear and anxiety.
With many of my own issues I've had to come to terms with asking myself some simple questions....Is this going to matter tomorrow? Is it going to matter next year? If the answer is no than for me it's anxiety. If there are going to be issues that are relevant past that it falls into 'Fear" and you have to take the issue to task and use whatever resources available for the best possible resolution.
Meanwhile I don't have an answer on the death issue, I'm not sure anyone really does until the last second of their life. I have always felt that you are born you live and you die.
But I am reminded of something someone once said, "I want to live not merely survive" Living right now is very difficult for many, surviving is just as difficult without having the benefit of happiness and joy.

 

[2322]

Had we truly no fear, we'd be dead. We'd never fear hurting ourselves or others.

 

[Bbucko]

Fear of what?

I have lived with HIV for over 25 years; I don't fear death, just suffering (despair, egregious pain, etc). Because I live on borrowed time and have little faith in any real future for myself, I do not make long-term or open-ended commitments. This does not mean that I shy away from getting down and gritty at all (just the opposite), I just have no stake in believing that I'll get back up again every time.

I have a rep as being a straight-shooting, take-no-prisoners kinda guy in my communication and extremely stoic regarding the bruises life's delivered to me. But I'm still human: for every push back and act of aggression or defiance, there's an reflexive recoiling or forgetting and dropping or impulse toward isolation and denial. Learning to balance these two contradictory drives has been the greatest challenge of my life, and I'm not always 100% successful, try though I might.

I think of the adjustments I've made regarding that challenge as a very slow maturation. There's part of me that will always remain the provocative and confrontational kid with the spiky hair, killer legs and big dick, ripped clothes and steel-toed boots who lived a life of (barely managed) chaotic anarchy and roaming the sidewalks of Boston or New York or Paris 20 or 30 years ago. That is actually the sweet-spot of my comfort zone, as alien as it sounds to others: it's who I am.

But it's not all of who I am. I spent 25+ years building a career (and expertise) out of thin air, and was always the hardest-working (if not always highest-earning) person I knew. My drive and determination came at a very high price to those who love(d) me but needed to make due with a phone call or card instead of my actual physical presence.

I've always said that the Rue de Regret runs through a really shitty neighborhood and have tried to spend as little time there as possible, but if I could do one over again, it would have been being a better brother/uncle/husband and no quite so conscientious an employee. But that has nothing to do with fear, per se.

I am hardly immune to neuroses and phobias: I have an absolute horror, for instance, of bridges, raised surface lanes and overpasses. Watching a movie or TV show that exploits vertigo on the part of its audience leaves me panting and with soaked palms. I once had to be carried out of an IMAX theater because I was too terrified to move or stay and just resorted to a constant wailing panic attack that nearly turned into a convulsion for just that reason. My one experience at the Eiffel Tower resulted in the worst migraine of my life: three full days in bed, without eating, in unspeakable agony once they succeeded in prying me off a column on the second level.

But I don't think that's quite fear. As to the more normal types of fear-driven response that I think the OP was alluding to, the answer is "no", or "only rarely". I resist social pressures at conformity and take a very dim view at those who do so at the expense of their dreams and ambitions. I am about as fearless sexually as someone can be even when it crosses the line into a kind of compulsive curiosity and sense of reckless adventure; this has led me down some rather dark, lonely roads.

I eat things Americans routinely find repellant, but draw my own lines at offal and tenticles and anything presented "whole" (like a suckling pig, sardines or deep-fried smelts) except for Maine lobster and other shellfish. I still order my beef rare and my oysters on the half-shell (dozens, please :biggrin1.

Some have called me fearless, others foolish. I prefer to think of myself as hungry.

 

[2322]

Beautiful to read Uncle B and give me a lot to think about.

 

[D_Rod Staffinbone]

Fear of what?

I am about as fearless sexually as someone can be even when it crosses the line into a kind of compulsive curiosity and sense of reckless adventure; this has led me down some rather dark, lonely roads.

I still order my beef rare and my oysters on the half-shell (dozens, please :biggrin1.

it does my heart good to know there is still someone like you alive on this planet at the same time as me.

acme oyster house, new orleans, french quarter. ever been there? ever gotten drunk there whilst eating dozens of oysters at the bar with an equally reckless friend?

nothing much to fear. life is for the living.

 

[Bbucko]

it does my heart good to know there is still someone like you alive on this planet at the same time as me.

acme oyster house, new orleans, french quarter. ever been there? ever gotten drunk there whilst eating dozens of oysters at the bar with an equally reckless friend?

nothing much to fear. life is for the living.

Beautiful to read Uncle B and give me a lot to think about.

Bbucko bbows low, thanks his friends.

Haven't made it to New Orleans yet. It's still on the list.