Fear of the unknown

We all have experienced some kind of fear in life. One such fear is “fear of the unknown “which is an intrinsic characteristic of any human being. Let me share you my recent experience during my solo trip to Alwar(Rajasthan) which made me ponder about it.

I started my journey around nine at night and reached Alwar around 11:45 pm. The city is away from the glamorous metropolitan life and was completely deserted. My spontaneous decision to travel didn’t give me the chance to book my hotel in advance so I had to search for my stay after I reached the city. With few failed attempts, I thought to ask some local for the advice.

While I was crossing a junction, I came across a young Muslim boy, with ethnic attire and typical cultural looks. I stopped my car and asked for some address. He seemed to be new in the place and politely told me that he is not aware of the local geographies of the place. When I was about to leave the place, he asked me where I was heading towards, and requested for a lift to some place which was around fifteen kilometers away. Since childhood, we are taught to never trust any stranger and of course, we ought not when it is 12 midnight and one is hundreds of kilometers away from his home all alone. Since I was in an adventurous mood so I decided to give him a ride being aware of the consequences. 

The night was dark and so was my feeling inside. The more I talked to him, I realized that he was just like any of us and was very thankful as I helped him at a moment where he was in a dire need. After we reached the location, I was offered a bed which gave me an opportunity to sleep under the stars. I accepted the offer and spent one of the most wonderful night stays of my life glazing the beautiful stars.

The only reason I shared this experience with you all was to make you understand that if I would have fallen to the pray of “Fear of the unknown" then I would never have experienced such wonderful stay. 

My point is not to overrule the safety precautions but to understand that our lifestyle and upbringing has made us all fear more then what is required. This sometimes has also resulted in big stuff like hatred against a community or small stuff like not willing to try new stuff in life.  

The emotion of fear in our system was a necessity for our evolution because, at that time, we were in the process of understanding nature and ourselves as well. It was important for us to be careful with all the new things around because one mistake might have questioned the existence of humankind. Now when human beings have evolved to such an era of artificial intelligence, genome coding, and cloning. There is less necessity to be so much fear to the unknowns. Evil people have started using this intrinsic characteristic of ours to push ourselves against people or believe and even accumulate lots of wealth for themselves. 

When I see around people fearing to try new stuff in lives, living a monotonous life or pushing themselves away from taking risks. I feel sad because they are losing a lot. Life is not just about playing safe but also sometimes about overcoming your fear of the unknown and taking risk. One might not become successful or achieve wonders in life but believe me at least he would have a lot of experiences to share and smile upon.