Fear.

It’s a scary word, it really is. It gets caught in your teeth, choking your breath as you try to spit it out. It should.

It is what you would call a ‘necessary evil,’ although it’s really not the evil part of a scary story. You could say it’s a warning, a defense mechanism, or that it’s only there to protect you and you should listen to it.

However, fear is only a mindset, an idea, an emotion. An emotion can kill you, though, just as easily as a bullet. Of course, you can control emotions, channel them into actions and strengthen yourself through them, but with that you’d need an extreme amount of willpower to overcome the amount of emotion and tension in a situation.

Don’t think I’m saying that emotions are bad, because they’re a blessing. Joy, euphoria, and bliss are emotions just as much as fear is. The most technical (and sorrowful) people in the world think that emotions aren't real at all, and that they’re only chemical reactions taking place in your brain, releasing chemicals into your bloodstream. Those people believe that there is no such thing as a soul, and that life isn't really, well, life. I’d have to disagree, but that’s a different argument.

Basically, emotions are practically the best thing to ever happen to life forms since gravity, especially when people learn to control them.

So then, what would happen to a person if they could control their fear, funnel it into power and intelligence? They wouldn't fear anything anymore, not really, which would mean they wouldn't fear death.

And, if you don’t fear something, you believe you could overcome it.

If you didn't fear death, then you’d be virtually- emotionally- immortal.

Immortality is a curse. It kills you from the inside out, tormenting you with the promise of death never to come. Of course, I guess I wouldn't be the expert of exponential life seeing as I’ll die someday just like the rest of us, but if I was to imagine an endless life, I think I would drive myself absolutely mad. Your entire existence would become observing people suffering the constant threat of a life ending, and the relief they may feel when it does. There is no true life without death.

Of course, true ‘immortality’ is scientifically impossible.

Emotional immortality, however, is a completely different idea.

If you were emotionally immortal, you would fear death, but you would fear it as you fear getting in trouble. Or, rather, you would respect it, and you would not try to stop it.

If someone was to respect death, a healthy respect, and to love life, then they would be emotionally immortal. There would be no terrible ending of their story or tragic conclusion to their legacy. They would pass away and die like anybody else, but if they truly were emotionally immortal, then their memory would live on as strong and happy as it would have when they were alive.

If you really do love to exist, to be on earth, if you enjoy where you are in life and honestly believe that you’re not only bettering yourself but other people, then you have the worst half down. You will already know what love and compassion is.

For some people, they may think that to accomplish that you’d have to practically move mountains and change hundreds of lives. These people would be wrong, because the man who may achieve this may not be the millionaire who funded the construction of six hospitals but the father who loves his wife and children.

The second half of being emotionally immortal is the easy part- don’t fear death.

Death is a fact, it’s going to happen whether you want it to or not.

So, if you know something is definite, which death is the only thing that most people can consider as definite, then why not welcome it? Why not except it?

If you can stop worrying about something that will definitely happen and enjoy what you love and what others love about you, then you could become- in theory- emotionally immortal.
Fear is an idea.

An idea can be struck down with only the thought of another idea, a better one, with more logic and worth standing behind it.

A fear, the idea of one, and the vision of such anxiety can be defeated with the simple thought with more truth and less lies.

A thought such as that of courage,

Or hope,

Or bravery,

Or the will to keep standing.