Every now and again, I come across a cute little question game on Facebook. You tag a friend in it, and then they copy and paste a list of questions to their wall, and they’re supposed to fill in the answers. The list contains questions like, “Are you in a relationship”, “What’s your favorite food”, “What’s your favorite color”, etc. The question on the list I always fail to answer truthfully, is when it asks, “What’s your biggest fear?” The reason being because I don’t want other people to know what my real fear is. There are many things I share with others, things I’m comfortable being candid about with strangers even, but my biggest fear isn’t one of them. Sometimes we have more than just one big fear, but usually the ones we tell others about, aren’t the ones that are really deep in our souls.
Think about Harry Potter for a moment, and imagine what your Boggart would be… Pretty scary thought, right? The characters Ron and Neville both had childish fears: spiders, a stern and menacing teacher, you get the point. Then there was Ron’s mother, who feared something far more horrifying, and more realistic than either of those; she feared her family’s mortality. She was terrified at the thought of her whole family ending up dead in a bloody battle. It was an unpleasant part of the 5th Harry Potter novel, but it illustrated the harsh realities of the things we fear as adults. Sure, we might tell people that we’re terrified of spiders, or math homework, but that’s not altogether true. As adults, we fear things that are much more serious than anyone could comprehend (unless they’ve endured it themselves).
So while I am not fond of spiders, that’s not what my biggest fear is, but it’s what I tell other people. I lie to my friends about what truly scares me, and you know what? So do you.
The simple fact is, our biggest fears are the ones we refuse to acknowledge. They are truths about ourselves lodged somewhere deep in our subconscious. We try not to think about them, because we refuse to let them take hold of us. Any other route would feel like admitting defeat. We all lie about our true fears. We don’t want to admit to ourselves or other people that we’re afraid of anything, because fear is seen as weakness. Instead, we go along with typically accepted, standard fears: the dark, drowning, needles, spiders, clowns, etc. We’ll never say what our true fears are because we don’t want to believe that they exist in the first place. There’s a huge level of vulnerability that you have to be comfortable with allowing yourself to have in order to admit your biggest fears. Most of us aren’t ready to be that vulnerable. We don’t want to feel overexposed in front of our friends. What might be a big fear for one person, might be something to be laughed at or scoffed at by someone else. If we’re not ready to take that leap, it’s because we’re worried about what that other person will do with that information. Who else is going to find out about it, now that the secret is out? Will the person we told try to use it against us? Will they shame us privately, or humiliate us publicly? Will the wrong person find out what we value most, and try to take it from us, or destroy it? The important stuff, whatever it is that we genuinely care about, it’s pertained to our biggest fear, which I think for all of us, is the same thing. If you’re a single, career-oriented person, losing your job would be your worst fear or losing the use of your hands or legs, if they’re tied directly to your skill. Losing hope, losing your talent, losing your mind… For those with families, they fear losing their loved ones:the death of a spouse, the end of a marriage, the loss of a child, kidnapping, miscarriages, all of these things are our biggest fears. Lots of people tell us to face our fears, but that advice does not apply here. These are fears we never want to be forced to face, and for good reason. Some of us don’t realize what our true fear is yet, whereas some of us have known for a long time. In the end, we all share a common thread: We all fear loss.
