Fear: Just Do it

Okay, so I was given an assignment by my Brief professor and was a bit anxious about it, so I relayed these fears to my professor in an e-mail. His response: "Please see the following link," which led to an Amazon.com page featuring the book Feel the Fear...and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers. It was a brief counselor's very brief way of telling me to get over myself. I laughed out loud at the e-mail because he is right. I mean , it's not that simple, but he is still right. I mean, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?

So with that said... Sometimes the things that run through my mind don't make a lot of sense, but yet they still keep me awake at night. I guess that's what happens when a person has insomnia! Anyway... Recently I was thinking about what someone said about genetics and how everyone on earth at this moment got here because our ancestors were a little bit sharper than the rest of the pack, but then I was wondering where we are headed in a world that is changing to less caveman and club your dinner over the head to a world full of computer techies and corporate meetings. For example, there are a lot of people who are afraid of heights, right? This makes sense because being afraid of high places is your body's natural instinct to not want to fall down and die, but then, how (if natural selection got these people this far) are there people who are not afraid of heights? So I was thinking that these are the people who are willing to take risks and therefore discovered new lands, new foods, new medicines, etc. So you have these people who are here because they didn't fall off a cliff, but also because others were willing to take a chance and lived to tell about it. So with the new world as it is, the number one fear is a fear of public speaking. Is this a relatively new fear? I mean, clearly there were not public speeches being held amongst the cavemen and dinosaurs. Even the cowboys, who may have had public speeches, probably weren't timid about getting up in front of groups, picturing their audience in their underwear. So where did this fear come from? How do we as a collective group develop a new fear, just like that? It happens though. I mean, for a more obvious development of a new fear, look at World War II. People were building bomb shelters, having bomb drills in schools, placing innocent people in concentration camps, etc. It was fear and mostly likely fear that hadn't existed previously, but this had precipitating events that led to these fear. Public speaking fears just sort of popped up somewhere along the lines. I wonder...I bet some historian out there knows the answer, but until then, I just thought it was interesting...

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Another thing that crossed my mind today was how the DJ's on the radio were talking about the website DontDateHimGirl.com. I don't know anyone on this site, but I thought it was interesting hearing all of the callers talk about their previous relationships who they have posted on here. It's kind of sad actually because it kind of tarnishes people's reputations, but at the same time, it makes me wonder how awful these people must have treated these women to want to put this person on here. Anyway, interesting stuff...