Fear!!

Fear - in the process of human evolution, until today, the Man's most primal emotion, it's the most basic instinct, isn't it? There are basic necessities like food, water and clothes etc, but when it comes to emotions, I think Fear is the most basic.

There are other important emotions like Anger, Joy, Sadness etc but I think each one of those things can be expressed in terms of Fear. I think:

Anger: The 'Fear' of things not happening that way you want them to

Joy: Lack of 'Fear'. See happiness is different from Joy - Joy is a state of no emotion, but I 'd like to think of it as state of having no fear. This needs another blog to explain, so I'll let it be.

Sadness: The 'Fear' of facing life or society because of something that happened (mostly in the recent past). How does the Sadness fade? I think it is because you learn to overcome the 'Fear' of dealing with that mishap that made you sad

I find that it is a very interesting theory as I expore it more and more. I mean, think about all the ways in which it can affect your life...

I went to my doctor for a regular checkup recently and one of the things he checked was my Blood Pressure. It shows higher than it should for my age. He has been noticing it for a while and then he asked me to make changes to my lifestyle (yeah right! like that ever happens, right?) and eventually he had to face the fact of the issue - put me on medication. 1 pill daily after dinner. I am fine with it. It's just like a desert - except this one stinks, but that's no problem.

He said it was because of the stress my body is taking. I was going, wait a minute, am I working in the 32 degree cold weather out in the rain somewhere? Am I digging mines for a living? I mean what is it exactly that is stressful about my job. Drive a car for 45 mins on the road listening to my favorite tunes, go sit in a comfy leather chair with about 4 different controls for my personal comfort, lean back, slide up\down, tilt forward\backward.... and then comes the real hardwork - slide the mouse on my desk and keep clicking everywhere. Type a lot of emails, hit the keyboard keys and then the occasional "coffee-breaks" :p.... ok ok I know by now you know where I am going with this. That does not exactly qualify for hardwork.

Then what is stressing me out?

I'll tell you what is stressing me out. It is the 'Fear' of me coming under a 100 ton semi truck carrying raw meterial to Boeing assembly plant, all the while I am driving (which is about One and a half hours a day). It is the 'Fear' of not knowing when all hell will break loose at work because my deliverable has too many bugs or has not gone out in time, it is the 'Fear' of the grumpy old lady co-workers snapping at you for no reason at all, and then ofcourse the ultimate 'Fear' of losing your Job for any reason.

I think these days, not even coming under the Semi truck is as scary as losing a job and having to pay mortgage on a huge house, put the kids through school. The worst thing is that this 'Fear' is with us all day all night. Could there be any better results, if not Hypertense, it will be the Diabetes or Cholesterol or something else WILL get you.

I now understand that our bodies are not really biologically evolved to take food 4-5 times day at regular intervals - they are evolved to eat like there is no tomorrow when you get the chance and then live without food for another couple of weeks. We are over nourishing it and then running to the doctors with the resulting problems.

Well, it's 12:00 in the night now... gotta follow my doctor's advice and get some sleep!

- Sridhar