Fear (pt.1)

There is a song called Fear from Cunninlynguists, and the song starts like this:

“Fear is nothing more than a feeling

You feel hot

You feel hungry

You feel angry

You feel afraid

Fear can never kill you”

Fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger—if we don’t feel it, we couldn’t protect ourselves from legitimate threats. It reminds you of death approaching you, and you ought to do something about it. When you are about to jump 4 steps of stairs, your brain is reminding you “yo, if you don’t make it, you will get a concussion, you will become dumb, and your girlfriend will leave you”. By weighting the pros and cons, you might opt to walking the stairs, taking a lift, or even go back to your room and take a nap.

The same goes for any exciting things including all amusement rides. There is a theme park in Hong Kong called the Ocean Park, there are two sections: the amusement rides and the aquarium. I have never stepped foot near the amusement rides and I always go straight to the aquarium; I went to Disneyland and the only mechanical ride I was on was the train that would take you around the park.

Overcoming fear; or any challenges in life; has generally two ways: a step-by-step approach, or the ‘fuck it I am going all out’ approach. I am a man with very little patience in myself; so in order to overcome this barrier in life, I chose the scariest activity I could ever thought of: go to Canada and club a baby seal.

I am joking. I went skydiving.

The plan was to do it on my 20th birthday, but we were too drunk on my birthday and we ended up going nowhere instead. I was actually quite happy about it, I convinced myself that’s how I cheated death; but since my 21st birthday was coming up, I felt I would be too much of a coward to back off.

After Dubai and I paid for the event, my brain began to imagine everything that could go wrong during skydiving. I was terrified, what if I lose an arm? Or a leg? I couldn’t go gym anymore, my biceps would look small and Puti would leave me. But then I started to think there wouldn’t be any injuries in skydiving, if anything happens in mid-air it is a certified death in under 2 minutes. So I stopped thinking about it.

When we arrived at the airfield that was when fear started to strike me. It was all fun and games until I saw the plane I would be jumping out of: a bright purple propeller airplane. Well purple was a comforting colour, in the LGBT flag there was a bit of purple in it too. And then I started to think I could be attached to an instructor whose wife left him to sleep with a corner shop owner and he had a death wish, and we would soon become some minced meat in the middle of nowhere in the UK, and some Italian would come over and serve us as Bolognese. But it was too much to back off, I have made that GBP300 mistake and it was too much for me to flake it. Continue to Part 2…