Scared of what?
There is a forest between my house and the beach. It is not a large forest, but it is thick, utterly dark and there are wild boars and chamois living there. I know this because I can hear them making strange and also quite loud sounds at night. I never go walking in the forest during the night, never. I feel scared even when I only imagine myself walking there alone in the dark. Today I was having coffee and reading a book at the balcony, it was sunny and I closed my eyes for a moment just sitting there and feeling the sun on my skin. I started thinking about this fear of walking in the forest at night. What exactly am I scared of, what exactly produces this sensation of intense fear in me?
Is it the dark, is it the fact that there are no people around me in radius of 2 miles, is it the wild animals, what is it? Am I scared of dark? Well no, not really. I don’t mind the dark, at least not when I have a light, and If I decided to go walking in the forest at night I would definitely take a light with me, so okay, it’s not darkness that is bothering me, at least its not the main source of my fear. Am I scared that a crazy person will appear out of nowhere in the forest and scare me, maybe try to kill me, try to sell me life insurance? Also no, not really, I know that nobody is lurking there, I mean I know this forest, I know it during the day, why would it be any different during the night? If there is nobody lurking there during the day then there’s probably nobody lurking there during the night either. So okay, I’m not scared of crazy people doing fucked up things in the forest at night. Am I scared of the wild animals, boars and those funny looking wild goats, do I think they will attack me if they see me there? Hmm, yeah, I can’t be sure about boars but probably they would be scared of me if the saw me and wouldn’t want to come close. All of these things, darkness, being alone, crazy people, wild animals, I do realize that non of it actually makes me really scared, I am aware that those things don’t rapresent a real threat to me, so if its not any of these things causing me to feel frightened by the idea of walking alone in the forest at night, than what the fuck is it? What do I fear? Then I realized it, what I fear is not the infinite array of all the possible bad things that might happen to me in the forest, what I fear is the sensation of fear itself - I am scared of being scared, of feeling the fear, not of experiencing a bad event but of experiencing a bad emotion. I fear that if I decide to go in the forest at night I will be scared, I will be feeling fear and therefore I will be uncomfortable, and therefore I don’t want to go to the forest because I want to avoid being uncomfortable, I want to avoid being scared, I don’t want to feel fear. I’m not scared of what could happen, I am scared of what I’m gonna feel. When I realized this I felt so funny, it is night time here now, I’m gonna put my jacket on and have a walk in the forest.
Thanks for reading!