The lion cub is from the falcon

The cultivation of awareness and the inheritance of convictions, and the danger of inheriting others’ fears without subjecting them to one’s own reason, are topics worth pausing to reflect on and delving into deeply in our daily lives. A hen advised her chicks, before they ventured into life, not to fear or beware of the lion, nor the tiger, nor the leopard… because these are gentle animals. Yet she warned them severely against sparrows, chickens, and every small creature that walks on the ground! Some of us, or most of us, might find the hen’s advice to her chicks surprising, but that is the reality. We are no different from her. It is not necessary that the object of our fear be a human being. We may fear an idea, an experience, a new beginning, or a failure that has not yet occurred, thus becoming captives to possibilities that may exist only in our imagination.

There are those who fear poverty even while they possess enough to live comfortably, constantly living in anxiety, yet they do not fear wasting their lives in that very anxiety. Others fear illness more than they fear a life they do not live; they postpone travel and adventure, only to discover that what illness has stolen most from them is the fear of it before it even arrives. How many people fear the words of others more than they fear losing themselves? They dread criticism, yet they do not dread compromising their principles. They fear angering someone, yet they do not fear angering their conscience. Consequently, you will find a person spending years fighting individuals who are not the cause of their unhappiness, while allowing their bad habits, pride, laziness, and indecision to wreak havoc on their lives every day. In such cases, the unhappy individual has chosen the wrong enemy.

One of the most important questions a person should ask themselves from time to time is: Are my fears genuine, or are they fears I inherited without ever questioning them with my own self? Not everything we inherit is wisdom, and not everything we repeat is truth. How many people have wasted their lives not because they did not know the way, but because they have been walking the same path since childhood while looking in the wrong direction. How many people fear a passing criticism from someone who cannot change their lives in any way, yet open their hearts and minds to those who manipulate and exploit them?

The problem here is not fear itself, for fear is an instinct that protects humans. Rather, the problem lies in directing that fear toward the wrong target, turning a person into a captive of illusions they either created themselves or inherited from others, thereby perpetuating their anxiety and fear. A mature and wise mind evaluates matters according to their true size, not according to the noise they generate.

Iqbal Al-Ahmad