Fear and monsters

Compared to the peaceful, self-sufficient, proud, grounded existence of which we are capable, our fear-laden lives look ghastly. Fear drives us to make decisions completely out of character; we behave more selfishly (fearful of being shorted), more cynically (fearful of appearing naïve), less selectively (fearful of being alone), less adventurously (fearful of looking silly), and more.

This reminds me of a book often read in middle school: Lord of the Flies. In this darkly profound story, boys stranded alone on an island see some weird-but-harmless things they do not understand, which trigger fears that bring out the worst in them. The moral of the story is that fear creates monsters, not the other way around.

We think that monsters make us fear, but our fears actually make us into monsters.