We are born unafraid.

And then we learn to fear the world.

Gradually.

We become anxious about almost anything.

Our bodies.

Our minds.

The future.

Or the influence of our past.

What other people think about us.

Or what happens if NOBODY thinks about us.

We learn to fear our character.

Connecting to others.

Public speaking.

Food.

Loving people.

And if we go on long enough, the fear will be a completely autonomous beast, eating away at our wellbeing non-stop.

And what do we do?

We run.

We hide.

We numb ourselves with pills and drinks and whatever we can get our hands on.

We treat the fear like it’s a solid thing, an aberration, a disease.

A monster.

But it’s not.

The fear we hate so much, the fear that wears us out, is the smell and the taste and the sense of imagination.

It’s the echo of our frantic minds raging through our tired bodies.

And if we don’t know that this is all (and most of us don’t), the fear can become the only thing we can think about.

We start fearing the fear.

Fear, fear, FEAR!

What CAN we do?

There is a solution.

A fairly simple one.

A solution that starts with the beginning, the beginning of us.

An answer that is found in this realization:

We are born unafraid.

Fear is not who we are.

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(Photo by @verneho, for Unsplash)