Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | The Speaking Tree Blog | March 15, 2016

Fear being a problem of the mind, is unlikely to be allayed by physical solutions. So, it is better to identify the cause of fear and then overcome it by reasoning. Being a perfectionist, I wanted things to be in order. Whenever I found things were not in perfect order, I became distressed. This anxiety increased to such a great extent during my childhood that I wrote a poem that said, "Life seems to me to be a dreadful dream." I have read and thought a lot about this subject.

According to the law of nature, man has to live with contradictions. The world is not perfect. Once I realised this, I developed a realistic approach to life. Becoming aware that 'Maturity is the ability to live with things we cannot change,' I was able to rationalise the issue and live tension-free. The solution is not external; it has to be managed in the mind.

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If you can become aware that fear is imaginary and not real, your mind will be rid of fear. Fear is apparently a negative experience, but there is a positive aspect to it. Fear stimulates intellectual activity, which leads to creative thinking. In this sense, fear has an important role to play in our lives.

Fear keeps one's mind alive. Without fear, one risks descending into a state of intellectual stagnation. We have, therefore, only one option before us, and that is, to control our minds so that we may regard fear as a positive rather than as a negative phenomenon.