Fear, irritation and frustration

 Most of us have been to adventure parks. What do we like about these adventure parks? We love the adventures and the associated surprise element. While we love surprises and adventures in adventure parks, in real life we somehow get panicky with life situations that come as a surprise. We also want to live safely with almost no adventures. 

Probably, the reason is that in an adventure park, we have been assured of safety. While in real life, we often see many people losing their lives or facing severe difficulties in such situations. Therefore, we are generally afraid to face such situations and therefore try to make decisions that carry minimum risks. The more our decisions are centered around safety the bigger every new challenge appears and the more fearful we become. In the process, we lose whole of the charm of life and end up living a quite sub-standard and dull life regretting it in the last days of our lives.

So, what should we do? Should we take that car and start driving exceeding the speed limits on the roads? Or should we start experimenting with the drugs? or start mountaineering without safety equipment? Not at all. Love for adventure can not be equated to stupidity. Probably, we just need to look at our fears. Some of our fears are real. We need to drive safely within the speed limits because there are others as well driving on the roads and the safety rules have been made so that so many people can drive together safely. Similarly, we need not taste drugs to understand the damage they do. We already have enough examples and scientific research. Similarly, even a child will understand the damage mountaineering without safety gadgets may do to us.

What I am talking about is the psychological fear. As we grow up, we start associating fears with a lot of phenomena. For example, many students develop the fear of failing in the examination. This entire fear is generally based on giving too much premium to the examinations. Since the parents as well as relatives, everybody keeps asking about the examination and result, the kids somehow get confused about the result being the sole parameter of judgment of their performance. While, actually, the result of the examination is a natural reflection of efforts put into studies. If a student has studied well, he will naturally get good marks in the examination. Even if he does not get good marks in one of the examinations, he will get in the other. Moreover, studies are all about skill development, and in rare cases, even if the student has not been able to get good marks in any of the examinations, he will still do well in life with the life skills developed by studying hard. I have seen so many students failing in the civil services examination and doing wonderful in life.

Similarly, after getting the job, the same fear dominates our life in a different form. We have the fear of losing the appraisals, missing promotions, getting transferred, and losing the job. We start associating quite unrelated or remotely related things to these. For example, I have seen that many of the bureaucrats stop making decisions for fear of charges of corruption. They do not want to meet anybody and slowly and gradually get completely disconnected from the ground reality. The more they fear the more they lose their ability to fight the situation. Slowly they start getting panic attacks and as a natural defense mechanism, they start shouting at the weak such as their subordinates. 

Fear has a functional role in life. For living in this world, the safety of our bodies, our wealth, and jobs is necessary, There is no doubt about that. For example, food has a significant role in our life. It gives our body the required energy and strength. However, it can not be the center of our life. Similarly, fear can not be the center of our life. The center of our life is the exploration of this world. If we are little aware, we will soon realize where fear is outgrowing its space overshadowing exploration and making our life limited and dull.

Not only fear but all other similar emotions such as irritation, anger, frustration, etc have a functional role in our lives. For example, we make a decision to roll out a certain project in our organization. We realize that there are so many conflicting interests of the people sitting at the top of the organization. It irritates and frustrates us. This irritation and frustration is a natural defense mechanism so as to force us to withdraw. However, we ignore them and move one more step with faith. That again fails. We again move one more step and finally reach the outer limit of the frustration and irritation and withdraw. 

There is no ideal threshold for withdrawal. Every time we test our boundaries and expand them. That is the process of growth. Some may say that there should not be any frustration or irritation at all. I feel that frustration and irritation are quite natural to human beings. None of us is Rama. Even Rama got frustrated when the sea did not give him the way to reach Lanka. What matters is how a person responds to these frustrations and irritations. Does he give up or grow with them. Where is the center of his life? If that center is in fear, he will soon give up and if the center is in faith, he will stand up to these frustrations and irritations and expand the boundaries. That is what life is. Expanding our ego boundaries from me to we, a long journey though.