Mind over Matter: Fear

“Only thing we have to fear is fear itself” – Franklin D. Roosevelt. Fear. That terrified feeling that tingles down our spines. Fear.  Fight or flight? Fear. We even welcome and celebrate it. Just yesterday was National Scare a Child Night. We have Halloween, one of my favorite holidays. And even Friday the 13^th can be scary (depending on how much bad luck comes your way).

We all have different things that frighten us. For example, I’m scared of spiders and horses. Well, horses I can live with, viewing them in the wild or in the field. I’m fine with that. They are beautiful creatures. I’m scared to ride one. I don’t even like standing next to a horse, unless it is a good distance (say ten feet). Spiders, though, are my worst enemy. I see them and my skin just starts to crawl. The bigger they are, the more scared I am of them. Kind of difficult since North Carolina has some large spiders. I use to have a rental in a wooded area. When I first moved in, the house exterior was coated in large spiders and their webs. Talk about living in Fear.

As scary as physical objects are, the thing that scares me the most is something you can’t control: the mind. The tales that chill my spine are those such as Poe’s Tall Tell Heart or Stephen King’s Secret Window. How Poe describes the murder and the pounding of the heart under the floor board – it made my own heart race. Then there is Secret Window. The main character, Mort Rainey, is being threatened by a murderer. What Mort doesn’t realize is that he is the murderer. Only his mind has tricked him into seeing another physical person. Once the mind snaps, it scary to see what it can do to us.

“Only thing we have to fear is fear itself” – Franklin D. Roosevelt. And Fear is everywhere!