On Fear

I wonder if there are people who aren't afraid?

On April 28th of this year, I met a few friends at Ohiopyle to do some whitewater kayaking. To make a long story short, I lost my nerve and spent a good bit of time on the shore trying to pull myself together. After a while I composed myself and managed to get some time on the river, even though I still wasn't quite myself.

But it got me thinking about the nature of fear and how people deal with it.

As I see it, fear is simply an apprehension about discomfort. There are three ways (that I can see) to deal with, and thus overcome fear.

The first is to steel yourself for the discomfort. If you're afraid to ask someone out on a date, you can convince yourself that you can handle rejection. You toughen yourself up for the blow, then if things go wrong, you're ready for it. If you can convince yourself that you can handle the worse that can happen, you can face the fear. In my experience, this is a common way that many people handle everyday fears. Dating is probably an excellent example.

Another method is to deceive yourself. It's my opinion that a lot of people use this to overcome fears that they have no choice but to face. Fears such as that of driving on the highway or flying. Many people are never really honest with themselves about how dangerous those activities are, thus they never experience fear of them. Unfortunately (again, in my opinion) a lot of people use this technique when they drive, which results in a lot of idiots on the highway completely oblivious of the danger they cause by the careless way they drive.

The third method is reducing the risk. This falls into the category of confidence. It's basically the process of realizing that the chance of experiencing the discomfort is acceptably low. This may be the result of safety measures or a belief in ones ability to handle the dangerous situation.

When I froze up on Saturday, it never really occurred to me that I'd never put the boat back in the water. I did worry that it would take an unreasonably long time to regain my confidence, but that's just a matter of logistics.

I've seen people give up on various activities after one try because they were too terrifying. I expect those people have been using the denial method for so long that they don't know what to do when faced with undeniable danger.

The fact is that we're all in danger at all times. It's usually not worth worrying about, because of the low risk. It's possible that your house could burn down while you're sleeping, but how likely is it really? That's no reason to pretend the possibility doesn't exist at all, but I suspect that a lot of people do just that.

I never understood how much fear controls people until the World Trade Center disaster. The number of people who let their fear control them after that disaster was incredible. It caused a recession. It brought financial disaster on many airlines. What happened? Did the danger of plane hijacking increase after those events? No, but the average person's awareness of that danger increased. Many were forced out of denial by the constant reminders.

Security experts know this. It's interesting that most of the security measures we've seen implemented since September 11, 2001 are not aimed at making air travel safer, but are intended to make the public feel safer. This isn't my opinion, there are many articles published about this effort. It works, make people take off their shoes and travellers feel safe again.

Coming back to where I started, I don't think anyone is without fear. After my little panic attack in the kayak, I watched a video of several world-class expert kayakers taking on some serious whitewater. Though the interviews it was obvious that they were afraid, but they faced their fear and made their way through it.

I guess courage is simply the ability to act in spite of fear.