Fear Misunderstood

This morning I sat down to my desk and turned on my iTunes. I decided to listen to John Mayer's second to last album Continuum and the song The Heart of Life began to play. I've heard the song countless times but he said something that really stood out to me. "Fear is a friend that's misunderstood." Being the deep thinker that I am - loving to rip things apart and put them back together, I sat at my desk and kept repeating those words to myself and came to the realization that that is the most amazing truth I've heard in a while. "Fear is a friend that's misunderstood." We often run from our fears due to a misunderstanding that we aren't willing to take the time to grasp a full understanding of. But a friend? How is fear a friend? Well, if we think about it in pretty general terms, our fears come for the simple reason of us facing and conquering them. Once that fear has been looked square in the eyes and you've "taken the bull by the horns" and conquered that fear once and for all it does indeed become a friend. Whether it be the fear of failure, abandonment, or falling in love . . . in all these cases these things have to be faced in order for us to live a semi-sane, semi-normal life. It's a matter of developing a healthy relationship with your fears. Not worshipping them and giving them more power than necessary. It's a matter of acknowledging and then extinguishing them. So maybe I'm reaching . . . but I have a new friend.