Fear

Human beings are receptive and reactive to various emotions. According to shastras,  our actions revolve around nine basic forms of emotions - Love, Anger, Fear, Disgust, Curiosity, Compassion, Bravery, Mirth and Peace. Each emotion evokes a set of reaction or counter emotion to complete an action. It is difficult to determine which of these nine emotions plays the most important role in one's life, since the relationship between the emotion and human is relative; for a priest may be Peace plays the most important role, whereas for a soldier Bravery defines most part of his actions. Similarly, people with various goals and orientations in life have different emotions playing significant roles to base their actions.  But, is their something called the Strongest Emotion? An emotion that surpasses every emotion and dominate our minds, body, soul and actions? Well, there are thousands of literary works, essays and poetic expressions to emphasize that "Love" is the strongest human emotion. To quote Charles Chaplin, "You need power only when you want to do something harmful, otherwise Love is enough to get everything done." But, how much of this is true? There is no dearth of love in the Universe, yet countries are at war, sects are at war, genders are at war...even worst,  love itself is at war with customs and traditions. No, love is not enough to get everything done. Certain aspects of this emotion can play important role, like we can love the music or food or attire of someone, someplace but we can't love the complete entity of that place or person. We choose the areas of love, we choose or decide in our heads the things that will evoke love, anger, or disgust. Mostly we choose which emotion will stimulate by which action... Except one - Fear. 

I love observing people around me, kids, young, old...all the people I come in contact with on a daily basis, or occasionally. And I have observed that Fear is the strongest emotion that can get everything done. The fear of losing a job, the fear of losing a loved one, the fear of being reprimanded for doing or not doing something, the fear of getting hurt, the fear of rejection, the fear of death, the fear of inviting the wrath of almighty, the fear of failure, the fear of being abused...the list is never ending. This emotion doesn't let us choose...it chooses us! It is unpredictable, unexpected and of course unwelcome. Yet, all around us, from day till night this emotion follows us. Which action or words will grip us with this emotion is unknown...this fear of unknown is the strongest form of emotion that define our lives. After all humans are animals too and animals learn to identify with this emotion from birth living in a prey-predator situation. Humans are social animals and our Predators often don't have shapes, legs and hands but that still make us Preys...and preys only identify with one emotion - Fear.