Fear

When a person fears something, he becomes deluded, and is unable to think clearly. Makes mistakes often and as a result, faces further difficulties.

So what does one fear? As we progress in our age, and become wise old men/women, there aren't many things we need to fear. 

We don't fear the loss of our beauty, as it is a long gone. We don't fear the loss of our youth, again same argument.  We only have to fear jaraa mratyu - old age and death. And of course vyadhi - disease. 

But me, I don't fear vyadhi much, because by God's grace, I am reasonably healthy. Except for occasional digestive disorders. 

I think I fear uncertainty. For example take today - I had sudden stomach cramp. Now I started my endless cycle of thought-process. What might have caused it - did I have slight burning in my tongue as well? Do I have food poisoning? How and why? 

Unfortunately these questions are not easy to answer. More so for me, as I don't eat healthy and over eat many days.

Many similar events will have no certain answers. And thanks to unlimited internet and unlimited time to spare - we keep googling. And of course, internet being internet, it will add fuel to the fire of our fear. And there is no solution. 

So coming back to our original question - what we fear is 'not knowing'. Children fear darkness because they do not know what is in that darkness. And they imagine it to be filled with ghosts, thieves or bad people. 

We are afraid of people who don't look like us for the same reason. We don't know them. So may be they are robbers, killers or something worse. 

When we don't know some thing - our mind weaves these webs of all possible situations, none of which pleasant. Even when we don't think of ghosts or robbers, our sub-conscious mind imagines all dark goblins - metaphorically. And we become afraid. 

Like they say in these ancient texts (very frequently, very very frequently)- when we see a rope from far away, we always assume it to be sarpa - snake and our heart start to race, our legs are on the verge of bolting from there. Until we come close and see that it is just a rope. 

But in that case, the time elapsed between onset of our fear and seeing the object of fear is few seconds. In real life, the uncertain things last for a much longer period. Hence the fear.  

Fear is also a habit, I think. So you start to fearing a certain event/person/location. And it continues. Until you break that habit - which is not easy.