Sunday 25 August 2013

Monster Under the Bed : Blog # 134

Monster under the Bed


          There would have been at least one night in all of our lives when we dared not to look under our Bed. Most of us would have dreaded the thought of what monster lay beneath our Bed as Children and some of us, as grownups too J.
Under the Bed, Monster, Fear, Beneath the bed, Phobia


            Fear is the most avoided of all the emotions we feel. Somehow all of us prefer to dodge it than address it head on. Take the case of the monster beneath the Bed. All we need to do is gather a bit of courage, get a light and look beneath the Bed. We will find out there is nothing underneath and that the scare is just a figment of our imagination. But we prefer the comfort of inaction and uncertainty.

Take the instance when we watch a horror film in a Cinema hall. The audience who otherwise gives the right responses for all other genre of films act funny while watching horror films. They try and make humor during scary scenes. Ever thought why? Again, we just do not want to address the emotion of fear!

It is a fact that we all feel scared. Just that the intensity varies from person to person. We should accept it rationally and act up on it. The more we dodge it, the larger it becomes.

       There is a certain sense of shame attached to fear. You will see very few people who are brave enough to acknowledge their fears. It is just like tastes and preferences. Some people like black and some others, white. We don’t judge people based on that. Then why judge people on the basis of what scares them? Some might get scared by Wild animals and some by tiny insects. Who are we to judge the magnitude of fear and measure a person by its scale?

I recently read ‘Amygdala’ in our Brain controls our fears. If it fails, we will not feel fear. My first reaction was wow! What a great state of being it will be! - A state of no fear. But then on second thoughts, I realized fear is a form of intelligence too. When a raging bull charges at you, one should get scared. That fear should trigger the action of moving away from its path. A state of total absence of fear might jeopardize one’s life itself!

It is our reaction to the fear which matters. Do we get a light and look beneath the Bed or do we live with the scary thought of the possibility of a monster which threatens our peace of mind for the whole Life?
                                                                                                  Arun Babu.

8 comments:

  1. Wow.. Amazing read. A very different look to what we always keep wondering about!!

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    1. Thank you Siddharth :)...glad that u liked it

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  2. hey hey....I suppose its the biggest "piece" of mind - Parvathy

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    1. oops :)...rectified,,,thank you Parvathy :)

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  3. The reading prompted a chain of thoughts on the subject.
    Fear is inculcated from childhood, when you don’t swallow the medicine or the regular food or do some pranks. Then there are a plethora of stories on demons, giants, the bad and ugly characters, wild animals. Fear of God creeps in at some stage…..Then comes the Papaji, Mamaji, Chachaji series… Bullying bros and cousins…..School teachers with a stick…. Injections…..As you grow, many kinds of social phobias are developed according to your personality and upbringing… Stage fright… first day in college…. Job…. New neighbours in the area where you take a house/ room on rent……then there are Traffic Police…..Goons and Mafia kings……fear of various social stigmas…….morality...the list is endless….. If one analyses we can group these fears into many categories. Fear of the known or unknown. Rational fear or irrational fear. Domestic fear or social fear.. Absolute fear or abstract fear. All these sets will have sub sets or intersecting ones.
    Arun, a good food for thought.. keep it up
    NANDAKUMAR

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    1. Thank you so very much uncle. Glad that u r finding time to go thru my scribblings :).. Adding one more to the fabulous listdown u gave...fear of fear itself :)

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  4. Well the collection of words and putting a right picture on the right place. it is really an amazing thing. Wish you best of luck in your work.
    cheap beds with mattress sale

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