In one of my past publications, I reflected on how important fear can be for human beings and for today's society. In a previous post, I said that parents instilled fear in their children in order to control them, so that they wouldn't do mischief, in order to keep them immobile. Fear has also worked in us: we don't take risks, we don't expose our lives and, if you like, it keeps us alert. In other words, fear is like a conservation mechanism.

But in the same way that fear can be a positive feeling, it can also be a negative feeling. Fear takes away our strength, paralyzes us, blocks our mind, silences us; in short, it makes us cowards. There are moments when we must act in a certain way and we don't do it out of fear. Let's imagine, the time we couldn't say: "I love you", forgive me, I renounce, so far, NO. Likewise, sometimes fear forces us to act erratically, clumsily. Because it has to be said, fear makes us flee backwards, but it also makes us flee forwards.

Source

One of the best Venezuelan writers of today, Héctor Torres, who not only writes stories and essays, has also made interesting chronicles, has a story entitled Fear. This story talks about the current fear that societies have based on stereotypes, prejudices, living day by day in crowded cities and events. Fear as a custom, generalized and accepted as a shadow behind the door.

Torres' story begins by talking about what a neighborhood boy should do out of fear:

Orlandito was afraid of being different from the panas with which he drinks beer in the afternoons, which is why he took care to involve himself only as much as necessary in the work he got as a messenger in a computer institute. And for the same reason he refused the courses that were offered to him for free, with all the package that the owner called "opportunities for improvement".

Source

It seems a normal reaction in human beings to seek approval from those around us. We do not like to feel rejected, excluded, so we tend to take actions and have attitudes that promote acceptance and support of others. In the case of this story, we observe that the neighborhood boy, not to lose his friends in the neighborhood, sought not to mingle or commit to his work:

Fearing that the panas would believe that he was beginning to feel superior with the new job, he not only rejected courses and opportunities, but also, between beer and beer, began to boast of his malice, telling how the old woman left him the box "paying". He did not take long to fear, moreover, that they might think he was weak, and in order to have things to tell, he began to consume small misdeeds.

It must be said that many times in order to obtain the approval of others, we act in a negative and reprehensible manner. When our energies are routed only to seek the approval of others, we are in a dangerous circle, because by not reaching it, we can feel lost, confused and insignificant. In the story, we see how the lad not only invents the stories of misdeeds and transgression,but also begins to perform them.

Source

For her part, the owner of the shop, who at first saw in the boy a good salesman's prospect, as time goes by, is feeling fear of him:

The old woman had so much "affection" for him that she was willing to let him go by those little misdeeds that had been reported in the box, but one day fear crossed his sleep like the clean cut of a blade and he woke up sweating. Two, three nights of nightmares with Orlandito as the main character behind a hood, forced her to tell her husband everything. She knew that by doing so she was closing the door to her employee, but she was opening it to a relaxed sleep.

That's how we see that each of the main and secondary characters in the story is growing in fear and are acting according to that feeling: The boy and his cronies, out of fear, plan a robbery, but out of fear, fail. The woman who sees the attempted robbery, out of fear, accelerates the car and stars it. A man who was wounded in the robbery, tries to get into a restaurant to protect himself, but out of fear, the owner closes the door. The police arrive at the scene, and everyone is afraid of what the uniformed might do. Fear becomes like a cloak that covers everything and makes us act a certain way:

And immediately, like an avalanche, like a storm that announces itself, withdraws and announces itself again until it finally explodes, it expands throughout the city, like an entity with its own life, like a giant version of the old Pacman, devouring every living organism to take control, mutating and changing appearance to become strong. Feeding. Like a virus.

Source

This is what fear is like: a monster that devours everything, it is a virus that spreads easily and quickly. The street is an incubator of fear, also the media, the people:

And it's the police giving the alert on the radio, and it's the people who read on Twitter about a robbery with wounded people in full swing, and it's the alcabalas into which all the motorized people who come from work will fall, and it's the people who elude them and threaten the cars that pass through them, and it's the people calling their loved ones who are supposed to be walking in that area... And it's fear surviving at the cost of becoming all their known masks: abuse, arbitrariness, violence, indolence, distrust, hatred... And it is that love is complacent but if it cannot live with someone it is with fear. And it hides. And the city surrenders to the pack.

When we see how fear expands, is used, sowed, we think that people's fear is scary. Of what they can get to do out of fear. Like when we are in a discotheque and we hear a sound like a shot. We are capable of passing people over in our attempt to escape and protect. Or, we stop living out of fear; we take shelter in our homes, we stop breathing, we stop talking out of fear. As Sophocle said: For those who are afraid, everything is noise.

---

I hope you liked this post. I remind you that you can vote for @adsactly as a witness and join our server in discord. Until the next smile. ;)

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE

http://ficcionbreve.org/miedo-de-hector-torres/

Written by: @nancybriti

---

---

Click the coin below to join our Discord Server

---

We would greatly appreciate your witness vote

To vote for @adsactly-witness please click the link above, then find "adsactly-witness" and click the upvote arrow or scroll to the bottom and type "adsactly-witness" in the box

Thank You

---