Fear has no teeth. It cannot bite us. But we fear right from the time we are young kids. We fear darkness because we fear the unknown. Many of us fear loud sounds. As we age and with time, our fears change. From the fear of examinations in school and college, we get afraid of different things.
When Raj was a kid, he had several fears. He was scared that his teacher would spank him for not doing his homework. He couldn’t sleep at night, because he thought he would fail in his examination. As he grew older, he began to fear competition in class, even the embarrassment of not being able to answer questions. When he was chosen for an interclass singing competition, he trembled because of stage fright. While all these fears passed one by one, the biggest of all his fears was the fear of passing the annual examination in his final year in school.
Then, Raj fell in love with a girl in college. Academics no more frightened him, but he was scared of losing his beautiful girlfriend to his best friend. He lived with so much worry and anxiety that he couldn’t sleep at night. He would wake up in the middle of the night and spy on both of them – are they meeting or are they talking to each other? His fear made him doubt his girlfriend so much, that he ultimately lost her. While she loved him a lot, she couldn’t accept that he doubted her so much, which was a consequence of his fear.