Why are people so paranoid about fear? Fear is part of life and almost everything seems to be driven by it. At least some people say this sometimes. This is, at times, by some, seen as a negative thing. But is it? Some suggest that you should rather be driven by love or something. But is love not driven by fear too? This might be a cool thing to say if it wasn’t so simplistic. Life is more complicated than one emotion. Attempting to reduce drives and instincts to one feeling is silly. All emotions have their place. The only time they become personally destructive or destructive to relationships is when they are not expressed or when they are over-simplified. There are so many ways to express negative emotions positively. I love to express violence and aggression but find the idea of getting into physical fights quite distasteful and fear injuring others or being injured myself. There is also no potential for a positive outcome that I can imagine so no motivation exists. I find violent video games boring - probably partly because I’m too slow and crap at them. My favourite ways to express anger and violent aggression are surfing and kitesurfing in any conditions survivable within my narrow limits. I usually feel better doing this in easier conditions when I’m in reasonable shape but it’s more humbling and funnily scarier when the conditions are just a little beyond my slowly expanding comfort zone. The edge of fear helps to focus my mind and the element of doubt makes the challenge seductive. After an experience like this, as I step back onto the beach, into the more boring uglier rigid reality, if I’m relatively unscathed, I feel just about better and more alive than ever. Between leaving shore and walking back up the beach I’ve typically thought of very little, if anything about this heavy gravity real world. I think more clearly. Things resolve themselves without conscious effort. I think people attempt to think far too much in ways that are increasingly disconnected from physical experience and engagement with the world. As if the mind and body are discreetly separate entities. There’s a tendency to try and think more and more as the years go by and more and more boring meaningless products are spewed from various production studios and factories. Too often the result is a circular motion, a spiraling drawn downward. I’m trying to think less and less and just let it flow and it feels better and better.