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.

            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.

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