Chapter Three — The Entity of Fear

This thought was born on a flight.

I sat by the window, the book on my lap open at the same page for some time now. Below us spread white clouds, and every so often I peered out in an attempt to identify something of the world that remained far below.

And then the plane shook.

First a light movement, and after it a stronger jolt. A cup of coffee on one of the trays trembled, someone stopped speaking mid-sentence, and several passengers raised their heads almost at the same moment.

I looked around me.

Interesting how quickly fear can pass between people.

Sometimes one worried glance is enough to stir concern in someone who until that moment was completely calm.

My hand rested on the armrest.

I was not panicked, but I felt my body grow more alert.

After all, even when we know that planes are built to withstand turbulence, the body does not always wait for explanations.

And then a thought rose in me.

How many times in my life did I feel fear even when there was no real danger?

Not only fear of flights, of heights or of unfamiliar places.

There are quieter fears.

The fear of making a wrong decision. The fear of losing something precious. The fear of change, of failure, and sometimes even of success that will lead us to a place we do not know.

I recalled a conversation I once imagined with time, when I stood on a ship's deck.

We spoke about the opportunities I had missed and the roads I had not chosen.

But time was not the one who chose for me.

In some of the cases, fear was there too.

⸻

When the plane steadied, I returned to looking out the window.

I tried to imagine how fear would look if I could sit across from it and converse with it.

To my surprise, I did not see a monster or a threatening figure.

I saw an older man, with a serious face, a bunch of keys in his hand and the look of a person who has not slept quietly for years.

He reminded me of a guard who walks every night among the doors of the house, checks that they are locked, and goes back to check them again a few minutes later.

In my imagination I invited him to sit in the seat beside me.

"I have known you for many years," I said.

"Since you were small," he replied.

"Even before I knew how to give you a name?"

"Certainly. You did not need to know the word fear in order to feel me."

"Why do we fear at all?" I asked. "Why was a mechanism created in us that sometimes makes us feel so uncomfortable?"

"Because not everything that happens around you is safe. Fear helps you identify dangers and respond to them. Without it you might approach things that endanger your lives without understanding it."

"So originally you were meant to protect us."

"Yes."

"But today we fear things that do not threaten our lives too. A difficult conversation, a change at work, another person's opinion. How did that happen?"

"Your brain learned to respond not only to physical danger, but also to the possibility of loss, rejection or hurt. Sometimes it identifies a threat in a place where there is mainly uncertainty."

I thought about that.

Perhaps that is why one can stand before a person and hesitate to tell him what we really feel, even though there is no physical danger in it.

The body responds as if something significant is about to happen.

And sometimes something significant really is about to happen.

⸻

"How do you know when to warn me?" I asked.

"I make use of what you have learned, what you have experienced and what you identify around you."

"But you are not always right."

"True."

"There were things I feared greatly, and in the end they did not happen. And on the other hand, hard things happened without my feeling any early warning."

"Fear cannot predict the future," he replied. "It responds to possibilities, not to certainties."

"So how can one know when to listen to you?"

"Not always can one know immediately."

I looked at him.

It was an interesting answer precisely because it did not try to offer a simple solution.

"I suppose there is a difference between fear based on real signs and fear born only from thinking about what might happen."

"There is a difference," he said, "but thoughts too may be based on real experience. The question is whether what you learned in the past fits the situation you are in now."

I recalled decisions I made over the course of my life.

There were times when a feeling of unease made me stop and examine something in depth, and it was good that it did.

At other times that same feeling prevented me from doing something I wanted very much.

"So perhaps the problem is not your very existence," I said, "but the difficulty of distinguishing between a warning and a hypothesis."

"That is an important distinction."

"And perhaps also in the fact that we want to be certain before we decide."

"How certain?" he asked.

I smiled.

"Sometimes one hundred percent."

"And is that possible?"

"Rarely."

⸻

The plane continued on its way.

The flight attendant passed down the aisle, collected empty cups and smiled at one of the passengers.

I watched her for a moment.

For her, the earlier turbulence was part of an ordinary workday. For another passenger, it may have been the most frightening moment of the flight.

The same event, two different experiences.

"Is fear also connected to what we know?" I asked.

"Certainly. Familiarity and experience can change the way you interpret a situation. But knowledge does not always abolish fear."

"I know that. Sometimes I know well that there is no reason for concern, and still feel it."

"Because not all your responses begin in conscious thought. The body may respond before you have had time to examine the situation."

"And then the mind tries to explain the feeling?"

"Sometimes. And at times it actually intensifies it."

I understood what he meant.

How many times did a small feeling of apprehension become a thought, and the thought led to another one, until a whole scenario was built in my head?

A scenario that had not yet happened, and perhaps never will.

"There is something strange in our ability to imagine the future," I said. "It allows us to plan, to create and to prepare. But that very same ability allows us also to worry about things that do not exist."

"Imagination can serve both," he replied.

"So I would not want to give it up."

"And me neither?"

I pondered the question.

"No," I said at last. "I think not."

⸻

"There is another thing that intrigues me," I went on. "Why do we sometimes call fear by another name?"

"What name?"

"Responsibility. Caution. Logic. Sometimes we tell ourselves we are only checking all the possibilities, when in fact we are afraid to choose."

"And sometimes you really are checking all the possibilities out of responsibility."

"True. So how does one distinguish?"

"Perhaps it is worth asking what happens after the checking. Does the new information help you move forward, or do you keep searching for a certainty that does not exist?"

I recalled the times I weighed a decision from every possible direction.

I wrote down advantages and disadvantages, consulted, read, asked.

Sometimes the checking helped me greatly.

But there were also cases in which I already knew enough, and still kept searching for another answer.

"Perhaps sometimes we fear the responsibility for the outcome more than the decision itself," I said.

"Possibly. When you do not choose, you can go on imagining what would have happened had you chosen. The moment you decide, one of the possibilities becomes reality."

"But not choosing is also a choice."

"True. And it too may have consequences."

That sentence stayed with me.

Not because I did not know it, but because I suddenly saw how many times in life it is easier to think that we are waiting, when in fact we are already giving up on a certain possibility.

⸻

"And what about courage?" I asked. "Is a brave person a person who does not fear?"

"What do you think?"

"I am not sure. There are people who seem as if nothing frightens them."

"Perhaps you do not see what they feel."

"Or perhaps there are things that truly do not frighten them."

"That too is possible. People differ from one another in what they perceive as dangerous."

I thought of people I have met over the course of my life.

Some who dared to do things I would never have thought of doing, and on the other hand people who succeeded in overcoming fears that seemed small and unimportant to others.

"So perhaps courage is not something that can be measured from the outside," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"The same action can be simple for one person and require great courage from another."

"True."

"And perhaps courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to examine it and choose how to act despite its existence."

"Sometimes," he replied. "But the decision not to take a risk can also be brave. Not every advance requires ignoring a warning."

I loved that distinction.

We are used to associating courage with big steps, dramatic changes, extraordinary deeds.

But sometimes courage is required precisely in order to stop, to admit a mistake, to ask for help or to give up something that is not right for us.

⸻

"I want to ask you a somewhat different question," I said.

"I am listening."

"Can one live with no fear at all?"

"There are conditions in which the ability to feel fear is impaired, but the absence of fear is not necessarily an advantage. It can harm the ability to identify danger."

"So the real question is not how to get rid of you."

"What is it, in your view?"

I looked out the window again.

"How to live with you without letting you make all my decisions."

"And what will help you do that?"

"Perhaps to learn to listen to what you are trying to say, and then check whether there is a real reason for the concern."

"And if you do not know?"

"Apparently I will sometimes have to decide even without knowing."

He did not answer at once.

I too was silent.

After all, most of the important decisions in our lives are made without our being able to know with certainty what the outcome will be.

We choose people to love, places to live in, roads to walk along.

We hope, plan and try.

But we have no way of seeing everything that waits further on.

And perhaps that is why fear will always be part of life.

Not because something is necessarily about to go wrong, but because we understand that there are things precious to us that we cannot control completely.

⸻

The captain announced that the plane was beginning its descent.

Through the window I saw the coastline and the buildings growing clearer as we approached the ground.

In my imagination the old guard still sat beside me, the bunch of keys resting on his knees.

"I think I understand you a little more," I told him.

"And what did you understand?"

"That one does not always need to be alarmed by the very fact that I am afraid. Sometimes it is an important warning, and sometimes it is a response to uncertainty. I want to learn to distinguish between them."

"And you will not always succeed."

"I know."

"So what will you do?"

"I will keep learning."

I smiled.

He did not disappear from my thoughts, nor did I want him to disappear.

I thought of all the times caution protected me, and of the times apprehension prevented me from trying something new.

I cannot know how my life would have looked had I chosen differently.

But I can be more attentive to the reasons that move me to choose today.

⸻

The plane's wheels touched the runway.

I felt the light jolt of the landing, and around me the passengers began organizing themselves for the exit.

I closed the book that was still open on my lap.

Interesting.

During the whole flight I had hardly read it, and yet I felt I had been immersed in a long conversation.

The old guard I had imagined no longer sat beside me.

But I knew I would meet him again.

Before an important decision, in an unfamiliar place, at a moment when something precious to me feels unsafe.

And perhaps next time, instead of hurrying to silence him or believing everything he says, I will try to understand what stirred him.

Is there a danger here I need to relate to?

Am I being cautious out of experience?

Or perhaps I stand before a new possibility, and all that frightens me is that I do not yet know where it will lead?

I will not always know how to answer.

But the very question already changes the way I listen to fear.

I left the plane and joined the passengers walking along the jet bridge.

I thought of the old guard and his bunch of keys.

There are doors it is good to lock.

And there are doors worth opening, even when we do not yet know exactly what is beyond them.

Continue to Chapter Four: The Entity of Words

© 2026 Nurit Rozenblat. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed without the author's prior written permission.