Tag: fear

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short stories

To hold anger is to blacken one’s soul

We all have feelings. This is what we are born with, and we separate them farther from one another as we get older. Using these emotions to the fullness of their power is what shows how humans are different from other creatures on earth. Below, you will see a list of human emotions. I ask that you read each word and decide what these words mean to you. I also want you to notice that love is at the top and fear is at the bottom of the list. 

Definition of Fear is:

  1. (countable) A phobia, a sense of fear induced by something or someone.Not everybody has the same fears.  I have a fear of ants.
  2. (uncountable) A strong, uncontrollable, unpleasant emotion or feeling caused by actual or perceived danger or threat. He was struck by fear on seeing the snake.
  3. (uncountable) Terrified veneration  or reverence, particularly towards God.
A woman bound, blindfolded and beaten shows true fear

Love is the most positive emotion we have, while fear is the most negative. All other emotions may be placed in a different order than seen here. This is just the way I lined them up from positive to negative in my thought process. If you wish to move the emotions in the list the way you feel they should fall, I suggest you do so. Furthermore, I maintain that “love” and “fear” remain in the positions I have assigned them. You may disagree with the statement that fear is the furthest from love, but that is because we have been describing this emotion incorrectly for many years. Fear is very powerful and not to be used lightly. When someone jumps out and scares you, this may be “surprise” or cause “anxiety,” but not true fear. One could even use annoyance, frustration, confusion, and many other emotions, but not necessarily “fear.”

  • Love
  • Happiness
  • Satisfaction
  • Affection
  • Self-confidence
  • Gratitude
  • Surprise
  • Sadness
  • Frustration
  • Embarrassment
  • Confusion
  • Boredom
  • Loneliness
  • Anxiety 
  • Shame
  • Annoyance
  • Disappointment
  • Jealousy
  • Pride
  • Envy
  • Disgust
  • Loathing
  • Anger
  • Fear

 

There are many that can be mixed with each other to form a hybrid of emotions. For example, we can take surprise and embarrassment and put them together to form a hybrid of what a certain situation may call for.

Many of the emotions listed above fall into the positive realm, like affection and gratitude. Others land in the negative realm, like fear and envy. Some may even teeter between the two realms, like surprise and pride. Although these last two can clearly be put on one side or the other, there are times when they may lean to the other side, given the right circumstance. Furthermore, they may be used in one realm while being misinterpreted by others or landing on the opposite side from what was meant. A great example is when a woman cries (in happiness or sadness).

Looking again at our list above, choose which of these words holds the most power. I would venture to guess that “love” is the response of more than 98 percent of those reading this post. I will not argue the point that “love” is a very powerful emotion. This is an emotion that is hard to explain but is very powerful when one experiences it. This is the emotion we all wish to have in our lives, and for good reason. The old adage, “Love makes the world go round,” holds a lot of truth to it. Besides, who doesn’t want love in their lives?

So, if love is the most powerful emotion, then we see the positive side as the powerful side. However, with the positive, there are also negatives. This is the side I wish to talk about today. Although the positive makes us feel all warm and fuzzy, we must also be aware of the negative. The negative can and will destroy all that we wish to experience in life. We look for love, but we dismiss what may keep us from achieving it. Take another look at the list above and see which word stands out other than love. Did you find it? Many of you may want to choose the opposite of love and choose fear. This would be a great choice, but not what I am aiming for.

Anger blackens one’s soul!

Man, in a shroud, yells with anger, consuming him.

Anger that is not released will do more destruction to your body than you will ever know. Anger that is not released will continue to build and consume whoever holds it close! Do you have true anger, or is it annoyance or maybe frustration? This is a question you must ask yourself. Anger is a black hole that will continue to consume you until all other emotions are devoured within its impenetrable shield! Anger is very dangerous to play with. Do we get angry once in a while? Of course we do. This is human nature. What is not in our nature is to hold onto anger and feed it until it consumes us. Let it go! Release the anger before it becomes the cancer it can become. Replace your anger with forgiveness and allow your innermost core to heal itself.

One thing you may consider is that it is easy to stay angry and build a life around it. It takes a stronger person to use his or her strength to release the anger and allow your insides some much-needed rest. When we are angry, our whole body, inside and out, is tensed up. This can cause harm to the body over time. not to mention the psychological pressure we are putting on ourselves. Think of how you feel when you are angry and the difference you feel when you practice forgiveness. Your body and mind will show you the difference. Do you want to feel the stress of anger, or would you rather feel the relief of peace? You can’t have both at the same time. Anger and rest are not compatible and can’t coexist. You must choose!

A person on the beach at sunset completely at peace

You may take my advice on anger or kick it to the curb. This is completely up to you. However, from one soul to another, I have lived with and without holding anger. I can honestly say that living without it is a better and healthier way to live. Take care, my friends, and remember, we are all in this together. 

Panic is useless

Did you know that panic causes bad situations to become one hundred times worse? Once panic sets in, the problems will continue to get worse. During a natural disaster, this could and will cause more lives to be lost. These lives are the unnecessary ones that could have been saved if only we stayed calm.

Lightning storm

Let’s take a look at a smaller scale of panic. How about the panic that some have of thunderstorms. Some people will have panic attacks during such storms. This can be something that person may feel they have no control over. These panic attacks are very real and can cause very real bodily harm. Panic attacks like these can cause heart attacks if they are bad enough. I’m no doctor and have never claimed to be, but I do want to help these people to understand not only the physical damage, but also the mental damage these can cause.

First let’s examine exactly what panic is. Panic is the fear of something that is believed by the person or persons  to be beyond the person or persons control. The dictionary states panic as “To feel overwhelming fear.” Now I must ask, has panic ever helped in any situation? Of course not, so we must train ourselves not to have these overwhelming fears. Easier said then done I’m told, however the military has been training panic out our people from all walks of life for as long as there has been a military. How do they do this, you may ask? With training and more training. The mind can be trained to think beyond panic. This is by no means any kind of brain washing. This is simply looking at a situation with a different point of view.

I’m not suggesting that you join the military to solve your panic situations. This is not necessary. You can do this on your own if you just put a little thought into it. Let’s take our fear of thunderstorms as an example. If you have a fear of these and they bring you to a panic, ask yourself this, “Is my panic changing the way the thunderstorm reacts?” The answer to this is of course a big fat no! Okay, so is your panic over these storms causing you trouble? Well of course it is. You are allowing something you have no control over to harm you unnecessarily. You are hurting yourself physically and with allowing your brain to control you instead of you controlling your brain, you are actually hurting yourself mentally. You may not like these storms, you may even hate them and you are allowing them to beat you up and cause you harm for no reason at all. The thunder is going to boom, the lightning is going to crack and the rain is going to come. What are you going to do to stop it? Absolutely nothing! It’s going to happen if you like it or not. So why let the fear take over when it’s not going to help? If you want to help yourself, get indoors, close the windows and enjoy the light show and drums. There is something happening that is awesome to experience and you didn’t even have to pay admission. Not a band in the world is going to give you that kind of show for free.

I must add this before I decide not to, we all are caught off guard by panic sometimes in our lives. When we are caught, it depends how fast we can get ourselves back under control that counts. As a trained fire fighter, the one thing that I should never do is panic during a fire, but it happened to me once over something very small in size. When my wife and I had first moved in together, I had an episode that still bothers me and yet makes my wife laugh to this day. I was watching television, lounging on the couch while my wife was cooking dinner. Out of the blue, my wife very calmly said, “Scaggs, I have a fire.” She had a small grease fire on the stove. Instead of calmly getting up and putting out the fire, I jumped up, almost leaving my skin still on the couch and yelled, “where, what!” Then she looked at me with a small grin. This seemed to calm me down and I had the fire out in the matter of seconds by putting a pan lid on the pan. There was absolutely no rhythm or reason for my panic, but it did happened. I have seen alot of bad fires, but I panicked on a very small situation. Until I calmed down, I was making the situation worse. Once calm, all was well. So you see, sometimes even training can elude us. Don’t beat yourself up too badly over things like this. Just file these instances for future reference and don’t make the same mistake again.

Tornado

Let’s move on to natural disasters like earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes. Is panic going to help during these things? No, not even close. If you panic, your setting yourself up to be one of the many that will be searched for when it’s over. The person who can put aside the panic and look for a way out, has the greatest chance of survival. Of course your going to be scared. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t, but don’t use that when things are happening. When it all comes down, this is the time to use your brain for survival not for running in circles. When it’s over, that’s the time to get the shakes and let the tears flow. Don’t start out failing! Think survival not panic and you have a chance to see tomorrow. If you panic, chances are slim that you will survive.

So what is panic? Panic is not only fear but also failure. You have already quit on yourself before you have even given yourself a chance. As far as these panic attacks that come to some of you out of nowhere for no reason, there is a reason. You need to figure out why you are having these so you can move on to getting rid of them. Until you have overcome them, breath through them and ask yourself, “Is there a reason I’m doing this now?” It will help. Take care my friends and Remember, we are all in this together.