Problems generate fears and these affect the basic balance of rationality necessary to solve them.
The fears are feelings of anxiety and fear caused by the need to avoid or escape of any person or thing considered dangerous or harmful.
Fears are felt even before they become fully understood or understood; they are deeply anchored in the emotional dimension of human beings. The fears are frequent, numerous, diverse, almost pervasive. Unlike pure fear or terror, which are different degrees of the same, fears do not attack with intensity but have the effectiveness of the sting that ends up wearing down any fortress. Unlike these others, fears are rather permanent tenants of being and especially of man's doing.
In most cases fear or terror have a rational justification, whereas fears generally do not.
But it is another characteristic that fear has that makes it an extremely dangerous enemy: fear anticipates and conditions the future.
Fear of the future is evident among some people, but this is not an intrinsic quality of fear, it is only one of its forms. In the case of fear it is a distinctive feature. People fear what is happening to them but fundamentally what may happen to them. Fear generally anticipates problems or their effects. In theory, people consciously activate fears in order to anticipate solutions or find themselves prepared to face the consequencesBut in practice they only manage to weaken the necessary defenses against obvious problems. Fears, in most cases, are self-fulfilling prophecies. And the latter does not happen as a result of a fatality of destiny, it is produced by a tremendously logical causality: fear weakens and undermines the strength that is necessary to face a problem rationally.
The only way to face and solve problems is from the rational dimension; no problem is solved from the emotional trench, not even from the emotional "level" that is less complex. And when the rational dimension is weakened for some reason, in the same or a greater proportion the ability to provide answers to the problem is weakened. This fragility that worsens as fears continue to attack leads precisely to the result that fear itself is responsible for anticipating.
This is the dramatic and dangerous aspect that fears present: they end up becoming a reality.
Fear, terror and all its variants constitute a reaction to certain factors or circumstances, not fear. Fear is usually intense but transient, fear is not. Fear often conditions the nature of the responses that the person makes, strengthens them, draws on the intimate reserves of creative energy and physical strength; but the fears no, they only “worry”, they are unsettling, they do not have and do not produce in themselves any kind of positive force. Rather, fears slowly and efficiently engulf every particle of energy.
Man has few enemies that are so powerful and subtle at the same time. At the same time, with no enemy of this proportion he behaves with such indifference and disinterest. People cohabit with him their entire existence, to the point that they can rate their life based on the responses they may have given to their fears. The quality of life of man is measured in terms of the fears that he has not been able to overcome and genuine Freedom is only a consequence of the victory of integrity over fear.
A person's story can be perfectly understood by describing their fears.
Fighting this powerful enemy is very difficult for a curiously simple aspect: fears nest in the mind; have origin and development there. Only there, on the other hand, can they be tackled and overcome. External stimulation as an explanation for the emergence of fear is usually marginal, at least from the perspective of rational analysis. Obviously, there may be reasonable facts that come from outside and that activate a fear, but ultimately there are more cases in which they emerge "from within" as a product of a mental process completely isolated from the facts. A fear differs from a "possibility" because the latter responds to a rational evaluation and is simply a fact, while the former is a much more complex emotional condition. The “possibility” of something happening can be included in the statistical analysis used to make decisions,But when this "possibility" activates the phenomenology of a fear, it has ceased to become a "possibility" to become an entity with its own dynamics. If fear is activated the "possibility" as such disappears.
Now, what generates this mental process that turns the analysis of a "possibility" into a fear? The answer is also simple: insecurity, weakness of character. Insecure people are the usual victims of fear; and insecurity is a symptom of weak character. In order to avoid that the fears take control of the emotional state the person must have a lot of confidence and self-confidence; and it is not that this prevents the appearance of the fears but it allows them to be controlled and the opposite does not happen.
For the self-assured person (of what he is and what he does), the fears are like a flock of bats in a dark cavern: they produce noise, apprehension, discomfort, but most likely they do not cause harm. The problems or the “possibility” that they occur are effectively like a dark cavern, to affirm the opposite would be reckless given that objectively the problems are not pleasant and can cause fear, but the transition from apprehension that causes a dark cavern to fear bats causing harm is another matter. The self-assured man goes through his dark caverns with discomfort, suspicion and disgust, but he interprets the existence of bats as a part of the whole, they are there because it is their natural environment. Sofears have a natural environment among problems, this is inevitable, but not necessarily harmful.
Nor is it about ignoring fears, in the same way that bats cannot be ignored, it is about them not taking control of things and thus avoiding a successful transit through the cave. The only people who do not have problems are said to be dead, therefore the transit through the darkness of these caves is inevitable, from there it is also inevitable to learn to place these bats in their natural context.
On the other hand it is obvious to understand that life is not an infinite sum of problems and therefore nobody is condemned to live in a cave. The clarity that exists outside of them (the absence of problems), in fact nullifies the presence of bats.
Achieving this clarity is the goal, but insecure people permanently doubt the achievement and this only manages to move them away from the goal. These people get bats to hold them in the dark.
However, the clarity or the non-existence of problems are found in a route in which there are dark caves every so often. Clarity is part of the route as much as the darkness of the caves, one cannot be explained without the other. There are only two variable elements in this constant: the length of the route and the way the traveler travels it.
The length of the route is conditioned by the traveler's objective and his travel plan, some people conceive and plan their lives differently than others; those who set ambitious goals and achievements, travel a longer route and can go further if they succeed along the way; those who define a meaner life course get less.
Those who set higher goals and start their journey find more caves than others, but also more clarity! These people do not start their journey thinking about caves or bats, these people love clarity: success, triumph, victory. They are aware of what they will find along the way but they set out on the journey, sure of what they want and what they can do. The others undertake short trips and often stay on the road, they probably also love clarity but this love is overcome by the fear of the caverns that they must overcome en route. And when the love of life is overcome by fear, in reality this love does not exist or is not genuine and without love of life there is no reasonable reason to travel.
Love justifies and sustains the journey through life, but rationality allows us to overcome the obstacles that arise in each cave. Some people have neither one nor the other.
The problems are what matter, the fears are not; all problems have a solution but the fears are dead and free. Every problem brings with it a world of opportunity and fear only suffering, frustration and defeat. Many times the problems are an effect of errors and others a product of chance; fears, however, have paternity over the misunderstanding and are never manifested by chance.
All fear leads to error, to a mistake, to a wrong step. Problems force people to meet the best they have, their deep convictions, their faith, their unknown reserves of energy and creativity; instead, fears suck out all the positive you can have. Problems put man in a state of dynamic tension, the same as a tiger has the precise moment that is about to attack its prey, fears leave it in the most pitiful state of laxity and this is the sad comparison that can exist between a tiger and a slug. But it is sadder still to see that nature never allows the tiger that behaves like a slug to survive, but it does allow man to do so. And if it is about completing the drama it can be verified that this same man,the one who was designed to be more than a tiger and dominate nature, lives like a slug and does not even recognize it or does it with dreadful resignation. The whole world may feel sorry for this man, but he does not feel the least bit of grief and self-respect.
And in this life it is necessary, it is essential, to have the capacity to feel sorry for oneself, this is the only thing that can ultimately lead us away from catastrophe and of course… from fear.
In this facet of " fear building " the mind is fragile and betraying. It is often thought that it is precisely the mind, the human intellectual capacity, that constitutes man's most powerful weapon, but here it is seen in its true dimension.
Apparently it is not up to the mind to prevent the tiger from becoming a slug; apparently there is something more powerful that conditions all of this. There is something additional that supports the mental capacity of man and leads him to its realization, because without it it is not explained how mental poverty can overcome his own weaknesses. This is probably not to the liking of those (who are more and more every day) who have “anchored” the development and the very survival of the human race in everything the human mind can give: knowledge, science, technology, etc., but all of them will have to admit that that same mind can lead the human being to its most basic and painful states.
More than two thousand years ago, Jesus of Nazareth, the Master, said that "we love our fellow men as ourselves" and there he established the perfect formula for the integral development of man, one that of course includes all his intellectual potential. Self-love is the foundation of man's well-being and progress, because it is he who prevents the most powerful creature on this planet from becoming a shadow or a caricature of himself. Self- love activates grief and causes a change of condition, self-love activates rationality when it is necessary to overcome a problem, self-love prevents fear from taking control of being and doing, self-esteem ultimately is the one that prevents a tiger from ending up being a slug.
On the other hand, self-love is a conditioning factor for love of life and love for others, thus allowing the journey to have more light than darkness, more blessings than problems, more successes than failures, fewer caves and fewer bats.
In truth, he knows nothing of love who does not love himself, and this is probably the only valid fear that can be sustained.
