Fear - an all consuming darkness that, if strong enough, can be escaped only with its remnants remaining. Those who are unable to escape are held in its unholy grasp for what feels like an eternity. Fear has a useful role in the biological system - it alerts us to danger, sharpens our senses, prepares us to survive. In this form it is natural, even necessary. Yet beyond this function, fear becomes something else entirely.
Outside of immediate danger, fear is a condition of the mind. It is not a predator in the grass nor a fire at the door, but a shadow cast by thought. And yet, though it is born of the mind, it is anything but imaginary. To the fearful, it is utterly real. It tightens the chest, shortens the breath, distorts perception. It becomes an apparition of the soul - a relentless whisper that grows into a scream. The afflicted are trapped in an echo chamber where one grief shouts over another, where possibility is mistaken for certainty, and where imagined futures wound as deeply as present realities.
To live in constant fear is abject torment. Day in, day out, one is afraid of what may - or may not be, what might happen, what could go wrong. This is not life - it is survival. A life spent merely surviving, never inhabiting the present, is no life at all. Fear drains colour from experience. It narrows the horizon. It convinces the mind that safety lies in withdrawal, that silence is protection, that avoidance is wisdom.
Yet fear is not invincible. It feeds on avoidance and grows in silence, but it weakens under examination. When named, it loses some of its mystery. When faced, it reveals its exaggerations. Courage is not the absence of fear - it is the decision to move despite it. It is the refusal to let imagined horrors dictate real actions.
To conquer fear entirely may be impossible, and perhaps undesirable. Without fear we would step into danger blindly. But to be ruled by it is to surrender the very essence of living. The task, then, is not to eradicate fear but to relegate it - to return it to its proper place as servant rather than master.
For when fear no longer commands, life expands. The world regains its colour. Possibility returns. And the darkness that once seemed all consuming is revealed for what it always was - a shadow cast by the mind, dispersed by the light of awareness.