Fear- an Unpleasant or Pleasant Emotion

Today early in the morning while doing the routine Morning Walk on the rooftop, I slipped and had the fear of falling and getting injured.

Now “Fear” is a human emotion that is natural, powerful, and primitive. It involves biochemical responses as well as a highly emotional response.

I was searching the definition of Fear on the internet and found that it means “An unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm”. On another site, it is mentioned that “An unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger”.

Then I searched the difference between afraid and fear and understood that “Afraid” is an adjective and it is the feeling of Fear. So sometimes these two words can be overlapped as they are associated with each other.

Now, I am a layman and have not studied psychology or psychiatry till now, so in this small capacity, I have understood by the definition that Fear is an unpleasant feeling.

I have some examples also, like fear of falling, fear of losing someone, fear of hitting someone while driving, fear of accidents while traveling, fear of heights, fear of examination, fear of wild animals or that to any animals, fear of physical operations and so on so forth.

These all fears are unpleasant and negative and these also create a sort of negative impact in our mind and we become extra cautious of these to avoid such unwanted situations.

But there are so many fears we have, which, I feel are not unpleasant emotions. Let me give some examples.

The fear of not providing the best facilities to the citizen by the authorities, fear of starting a new venture, fear of starting family life, fear of not giving the best education to the children, fear of not winning the games in sports, fear of not giving the best to the organization, fear of not fair in the decision making and so on.

These fears will always have pleasant outcomes and somewhere deep in our mind encourage us always to have these fears inside. Don’t we like these fears? Don’t we feel these fears make us strong?

Lastly, I shall share the famous poem by Rabindranath Tagore, who said:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.