Fear

            

           By nature we all come into this world very afraid.  We start out as microscopic cells that morph and grow into something that is living and feeling.  On the day that we are born, we make an enormous breakthrough.  The world in which we have been created disappears around us never to be seen again.  Think about how scary that really is.  It seems only natural that living organisms must experience fear when they are born.  It’s almost as if the baby who cries after being born is saying how am I going to survive in this new world?

               

There I am.  I am three years old.  It is cold outside and I am wearing a green osh-kosh bigosh jacket and mittens with a winter hat on.  My parents are taking me to see The Muppets on Ice.  Of course I don’t really understand any of this, I’m three years old, and all I know is that my mother is holding me and we are on a city street.  It turns out that there has been an accident.  A taxi cab cut off my father and my father rear ended him.  This was my first memory.  I don’t really remember how I felt but it was probably a mix of confusion and fear.  And then the memory just fades away.

I spent a good part of my first few years with a great deal of fears.  I remember being very afraid of some adults and older children.  They just looked so large, and some of them just stared right through you.  On my first day of kindergarten, I was given a place to sit the same as the other children.  My teacher then gave us something to color.  I remember starting to cry because I wanted to go home and be with my parents.  I didn’t want to be around all of these new people.  I had a family that I belonged to and a house that I lived in.  Why did I have to go to this place?  Damn you Horace Mann for coming up with the idea of compulsory schooling. 

However, thinking back on these early episodes of my life, there is a lesson.  Fear passes.  I remember these two moments in detail but yet the aftermath is gone.  The body cannot go on in a state of fear always.  Sure there are many things to be afraid of, but there are also things that make us not afraid.  In those two moments of fear, the fear passed because someone helped me through it.  My mother held me when we had an accident.  My teacher calmed me down when I was upset at school.  We can all get through our fears, when we realize that there will always be someone there to help us.