Fear . . .

A friend posts on Facebook: What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Excellent question!

The best questions are not looking for definitive answers, but want exploring, to uncover better and better questions.

What do we mean by fear? Can it be a healthy response to danger? Or does fear itself attract the danger? Walking along a quiet road a kilometre or two from the coast along from Albufeira, musing on Marc's question, I came upon this villa. It's not unusual to see big fences around the villas, but this one really does look like a prison. Crime in the Algarve is not particularly high, I am told. Yet the owners of this sunny jail have paid three or four hundred thousand pounds for the privilege. Do criminals find high security features like this tempting . . . evidence of treasures to be taken? Are fear and commonsense caution the same thing? Some poor souls, perhaps encouraged by chemical concoctions, lost the fear of heights, thought they could fly and flew to their deaths. Is fear a tool used to control us? Watching Portuguese television in bars (always on) the same images of a frightening world appear all day long. In another reality, I am wandering around without any sense of fear. Walking beside busy roads, I face the oncoming traffic and stay aware . . . commonsense. Meeting people along the way with a smile, I find mostly friendly people . . . and occasionally fearful ones, wondering why a vagrant is smiling at them, perhaps thinking I want something from them. Yesterday at the marina, I met two old ladies and got chatting. One was a Londoner and quite keen to say goodbye, the other from Sunderland and happy to chat about her grandchildren backpacking, Stanhope, life in general. More stereotypes. There was a book called "Feel the Fear and do it Anyway", which is good advice. Going into our fears dissolves them. Maybe the original question: "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" could be followed by this: "What's the worst that could happen?"