Fear Is Made Up of Disregarded Expectations
There’s a one fear that I feel to be the seed of any my other fears: that’s loosing control.
Am I a control freak?
Not really, since I can delegate without feeling any fear and with no need of directly being in control of details.
Moreover, I’m perfectly comfortable with the fact that there are many aspects of my life that definitely are out of my control.
So why is loosing control the origin of my any other fear?
A step back
Some years ago, a boss of mine at work told me: “Well, you behave like Spock… are you from Vulcan?”
This funny question brought an incredible wave of awareness in my life. It was as if for the first time someone described me to myself!
Like for Spock, logics is for me the map of the world.
But what’s logics? Logics is a set of well-defined rules.
Well-defined rules: that’s the key to describe my greatest fear. In my perception, when rules break, the end of a world is coming.
Why? Because rules are the pillars of any expectation.
What’s an expectation?
Expectations are a way to have a sort of control on something that’s not yet happened, by acknowledging that the possible happenings are restricted to a few possibilities.
We’d get crazy without expectations.
Imagine that you meet a new guy, a friend of some friends, in a pub.
You expect to start knowing each other over a nice cold beer, isn’t it?
You might have different expectations, but let’s say that this is the one you have.
What if this new guy totally ignores you, sits apart and start writing on his notebook while drinking alone his beer? In the end, you never know when you have to write!
But he would have disregarded the reasonable expectation that he would engage in a sociable behavior (a well-defined rule). That’s the point!
Now, think of disregarded expectations in some much more dangerous scenario, as much dangerous as you can imagine. And think that you have no idea of what is going on.
Scaring, isn’t it?
The seed of each fear
In fact, disregarded expectations are the seed of each fear: that’s evident if you think that expectations are strictly related to desires.
Each of us is the bunch of desires he or she desires, and desires are always about something not yet happened.
Not yet happened, but prefigured in our thoughts.
Now, put together desires and uncertainty of the future: the mind’s only antidote is the bunch of expectations that reflect our desires.
Disregard those expectations, and desires break. And fear peeps out.
That’s it.
Ending
As always, writing helps me to better know myself.
At the end of this article, I can honestly state that what actually scares me is not me loosing control, but the scenario where it’s not possible to rely on any expectation: that, for me, is the worst way of loosing control.
