Fear

You know that saying "People fear what they can't understand"? Well, I've been thinking about that, and I don't think that's quite right. People may not particularly like what they can't understand, but I think what people actually fear is what they can't control. We naturally have this need to feel that we have power over our lives and, when we encounter things that we know we can't control, we tend to flip out.

Yesterday, my mom and I watched Iron Man 3. If you've seen it, you know that Tony starts having anxiety attacks after the Battle of New York. Obviously, that would have been a rather unnerving experience. But I think the real issues was that, for the first time in his life, he was in a situation that he felt he had absolutely no control over, and he didn't know how to deal with that.

I think it is a pretty important issue for nearly all of us. We all want to feel that our lives are in our own hands, that we get to decide what happens to us. Unfortunately, the world is an unpredictable place. Furthermore, we all have to deal with other people, who all have their own goals and plans and are all trying to keep their own lives under control.

Anyway, I believe the best way to deal with this, much like Tony did, is by focusing on the things we can control. Personally, I pretty much live in a constant state of feeling zero control over my life. I'm fairly used to it at this point. So what I do is to focus on the one thing I do have control over, which is myself. It seems to work quite well for me, at least as far as fear is concerned. I may have a shit-ton of issues, but fear is not one of them. I know that I have no say over what happens to me in my life, but I trust myself to be able to deal with whatever comes. 

 "You experience things and then they're over and you still can't explain them."