On Facing Fear

A friend shared to me today a "wakwak" story. "Wakwak" is "aswang" in tagalog. Just like that myth of witches stories. He told me that he once went to a friend way back in college to get something and that he had to pass by some darkest part of the road with only his cellphone to use to light his way. And so going back home he felt something white was following him and he had to rush since he felt like he was goose-skinned already. But when fear was unbearably consuming him, he felt he had to face it. And so thought for that perhaps for the first time he would see "wakwak" or perhaps a floating lady. But when he faced what he thought would have been a worst nightmare...it was a white cow!!!!!!!!!!!! shock of my life hahahahahhaha. While he was recalling, we were wildly laughing at the story.

How real are things that we fear? Fear is an intense negative feeling that may consume or overwhelm us. It takes over automatically as a response to a stimulus perceived as frightening. Mostly from experience, fear becomes exaggerated through imagination. And they become so big that even the small thing becomes so gross.

Facing fear takes a lot of courage. It has to come out from awareness of the feeling and the decision to really face it. And when you are face to face with the thing you fear, and you gather more details of what you think you fear, in just some "magic" of the moment or perhaps we may say...when you begin to get more information and you get to understand, fear dissipates and you realize some of it or most of it are not real.

Courage is very much part of us. My friend showed so much of that in that "wakwak" incident. Though we laughed so hard at it but really the point of facing one's fear surfaced and dominated.

There can be a lot of situations though that would invite us to be more courageous. Thus, we could say that the measure of courage is when situation presents itself inviting us to be such.

This is something that i could ponder more...and share more later...and i thank my friend ...Orvi...for sharing it with me today:-)