The fear of unknown

The other day I was watching the movie Helicopter Ella. The movie triggered a chain of thoughts in my mind, so I'll begin with the incident itself which triggered this thought. The lead in this movie is Kajol who while observing the family tree of her husband accidentally highlights to him, that all the men in his family died in their 40's. The husband couldn't help resist the fact. He was in his late 30's and starts thinking that he has only a few years to live. So he decides to leave his wife and son to live the last few years of his life at his own will. Meanwhile, Kajol becomes an independent single mother whose whole life revolves around the 'son'. One day the son, who feels suffocated with his mom's excessive love and care, decides to confront her. He rushes back home and to his surprise finds his Dad back home after some 16 years. He very bluntly asks his dad to leave as he had learnt to survive without him. The son then consoles his mother stating that he finally understood that his mom was always afraid that he'll also die in his 40's, and admits having the similar fear of unknown. He also states that the best thing about his dad's visit was that he isn't afraid now because his father had crossed the doomed threshold already.

This was a movie and people can easily sideline it giving it a tag of fiction, but honestly speaking, I have lived this fear of unknown. I remember back in school I had this feeling that I was doomed and if I participated in any competition, even the winning team could lose. I considered myself bad luck, and year after year the results made me firmly believe in my perception. I never scored a first prize in my school life. I remember the incident which first sowed the seed of this belief. I had participated in the inter-house elocution for the first time. I gave a miserable performance due to stage fear, because of which my house stood third. The house mistress called me after the competition, she had this huge cane in her hand which scared me to death. She informed me that I was the lowest scorer in the entire competition and even though everyone else in my house performed well, they lost because of me. Though she had not hit me with the cane, her words had hit me hard. I chose never to step on the stage again and the thought that I can make a winning team lose stuck with me for my entire school life.

Now, did I ever step up the stage without any fear? Yes, I did. While I was in college, I was on a different mission altogether. The mission of exploring myself. I was one insane person who was seen auditioning for almost all sort of events during college fests. My agenda was to find out which activities I was good at and what new I can learn. Since my focus had shifted from winning or losing to discovering myself, I had eventually overcome the 'fear of unknown'. I came to be known as multi-talented and when I got my first ever first prize at college, that happiness is still beyond definition.

This was my story, you can share yours about how you overcame your fear of unknown. 

The Race

The other day, I asked a couple of my friends following question, "Suppose, you are running a race and are very close to the finish line, but then you realize that this isn't the race you wanted to be a part of. So, what do you do, do you finish the race or quit?". Both of them started their answer saying, "it totally depends on the kind of race", but one of them said she would complete the race and the other one said she would quit. Now, this doesn't mean the other one is a loser or the first one is a winner. Going back to their first statement, "it totally depends on the kind of race", makes them wise. When I asked this question to them, both of them imagined a race of their lives, wherein the first one found the end result of the race beneficial for her, hence she chose to complete. Whereas, the other found the end result of the race destructive for her, so she chose to quit. Hence both of them wisely chose their plan of action.

After talking to them, I sat down and analyzed the race which I was running, which had initially triggered this question. To decide whether I should finish the race or quit, I had to answer 4 basic questions about my race:

1. What kind of race it is?
2. Who are my competitors?
3. What is the end result, good, bad or unknown?
4. Is this race really important to me?

Once I had the answer to the above questions, I knew what I had to do. But, during this process, I learnt that in this competitive world, sometimes it is ok to slow down, maybe to think or just to regain the energy to run again. And it is not necessary to participate in each competition life throws at you, we need to choose our races wisely. 

What does it taste like?

I was just casually texting a friend and both of us just wanted to take a break and do absolutely nothing. That simple conversation triggered a question in my mind, that how does 'doing nothing' fix things? Does it actually work?

Then I went back to thinking about the instances where doing nothing fixed things for me, well fixed is the wrong term 'sort' should be the term. I realized that all this works on a demand vs supply mechanism. When things get monotonous for us, we tend to get away from the monotony, but don't really know whether we want to come back to it or not. Hence, we work towards deprivation or deviation. We try to deviate ourselves from that one thing which is causing monotony in our lives. We enjoy the change, sometimes love it. But after some time maybe we want to come back to our regular routine, or maybe not. If former is the case, then we are just bored and need a break, but if latter is the case then we may need to change the direction as whatever 'monotonous' stuff we were doing was maybe not we actually ever wanted to do and have still not developed a liking for same.

Basically, we mentally cut down the supply of regular stuff and create a demand for same. If the demand is not back, then we should understand that we had a surplus supply of something which we never needed at the first place and then decide how to deal with it.

Drawing a parallel to what I tried to explain above, I would just quote an incident. One of my friends was on a strict no-sugar diet. She had been able to gracefully pull it off for 3 months straight and was proud of it. But there are times when we lose control over our emotions or give up to our cravings. It was one of those days for her, she was upset at the lunch table because her presentation had not gone well. Just to change the topic I offered her the sweet of the day which used to be her favourite. I knew she would refuse as usual, but I never gave up on trying to break her no-sugar diet. To my surprise, she accepted it that day and placed whole of the sweet in her mouth at once. I thought maybe she is reacting in annoyance, but she had closed her eyes right after placing it in her mouth. We could observe her slowly chewing it and her frown turning into a smile. When she opened her eyes, I questioned her 'What does it taste like?', she could barely speak because her mouth was full, but the twinkle in her eyes had my answer.

Those were just my thoughts, let me know your thoughts about why and how do we break the monotony?