Love and fear

So I was playing on Stumble Upon today (Google it, I don't feel like explaining) and I came upon this:

http://members.shaw.ca/yofrizb/

And it's a project, I have no idea what for, that asked people to define love and fear. And I agreed with parts of it. I think a lot of romantic love stuff was lacking from the descriptions, but since that's just a part of love, no big deal.

But I really didn't agree on the fear part.

The descriptors of fear seemed to focus on all of the negative parts of it. Sure, there were a few things peppered in there about fear being natural and such, but not a lot. At all.

I don't think fear is a bad thing. Generally. Don't get me wrong, I completely acknowledge that some fear is utterly ridiculous and serves no purpose. Hell, I fear spiders. Even the totally harmless kind that eat other bugs in my house. How does that help me? Not at all.

But there are other kinds of fear that help you. There's the fear when you're walking at home in the night that keeps you from taking that dark alley. There's the fear that keeps you from going out by yourself with a random stranger. There's the fear that society and your peer group puts on you, that if you are to do something wrong, like, really, truly, morally and ethically wrong, that it will be discovered and you will be ostracized. All good things.

We put a lot of emphasis on overcoming fear, decrying it as something awful, as something to be overcome. But why? As proven above, some fear is not only natural and healthy, but GOOD for you. Not the crippling horror that people make it out to be. And even some little phobias aren't that bad. Like my spider thing. Yes, they terrify me. Yes, it can be annoying. But do I really need to overcome that particular fear to lead a rich and wonderful life? Probably not.