What’s your biggest fear?

This is it.

This is the first question I want to ask anyone I’m meeting for the first time. The eyes may be the window to the soul, but the way I see it, this question is the gateway to really getting to know a person. That is, if they’re willing to answer honestly.

I don’t like it when people tell me they’re afraid of spiders. Maybe it’s not justified for me to judge based on the answer to a single question, but really? Spiders? No one likes spiders, or snakes, or anything else that is largely a universal fear. But if I’m asking you this question, I care about you enough to want to piece a little of your story together. If there is nothing in life you fear more than a tiny arachnid, congratulations! I just hope you can handle the day when you find out there are much scarier things. I still respect you. I might find you a little boring, but you are equally as entitled to think I’m an over-analytical weirdo who really should spend less time thinking about the unanswerable questions of life. It’s all good.

I once had someone tell me that they didn’t have a ‘biggest fear.’ Intrigued, I asked them why. They told me that, since they had figured out that they weren’t afraid of death, there wasn’t anything in life they were terrified of anymore. Honestly, cue the applause. Choosing not to go through life as a fear-ridden, quivering mess is perhaps one of the nicest things you can do for yourself.

Surprisingly though, if this is your answer, I don’t believe a word of it. Why?

It’s easy not to be afraid of death. Not to be at all morbid, but death is easy. If you believe in any sort of heaven, death for you is a one-way ticket to literal paradise. Even if you don’t, there’s nothing particularly difficult about dying. Once you’re gone, you’re gone. The hardship and grief falls on the people you left behind, but since you’re not a conscious being and everything, you’re not particularly worried about that part.

So, I’m not afraid of dying, but I still have a pretty hefty list of things I fear. I’m afraid of failure, and of loneliness. I’m afraid of that aching feeling in your chest that comes around when you feel you have no one to talk to. I’m afraid of being a disappointment. I can deal with disappointing myself, because let’s face it, who doesn’t? But when you can see someone start to lose hope in you –– especially if that someone who has believed in you countless times –– it hurts. I’m afraid of not being enough, of being annoying, of being left out. There are too many things to be afraid of.

What’s your biggest fear? It’s a loaded question, because it tells you a lot about people. What have they suffered in the past? What do they see when they think of the future? What do they value enough to fear losing?

It’s a loaded question, but it’s one that I love because it shows you how human everyone is. The girl who seems unstoppable? She lies awake at night wondering if she’s going to end up alone. The boy whose confidence seems like it can’t be shaken? It’s a facade. From having answered this question myself and having asked it multiple times, I’ve figured out that a lot of fears worth having are as universal as the fear of spiders. If people open up enough, they’ll tell you that they fear a lot of things. No one wants to be alone, or not enough. No one wants to lose the people they love, or hurt them by failing.

So I invite us to work on something: if it seems that everyone fears lots of the same things, let’s alleviate them where we can. Let’s be there for each other, because no one should feel alone. Let’s lift each other up, because no one should feel that their failures define them more than their successes. Let’s just be kind. We might then have a hard time answering this question, but personally, I think it’s a trade everyone would be willing to make.