The fear of darkness

Fear can be considered to be a synonym of life. During the early days of childhood, there is the fear of going to school. Parents dragging their wailing children to the school bus is a common sight. On growing a bit older, the thought process of a child starts and with it also starts the fear of being labelled incapable for not performing well in academics or sports. A few years later, there begins the fear of future, of securing one’s life and finally during old age, there is the fear of death. Overcoming these fears can be considered to be a major achievement and if one, after surpassing all these fears finds the time to indulge in a little adventure, then life would be great!

I spent a major part of my life fearing about various things, one of the major one being darkness. People used to either be surprised or used to start making fun of me on hearing about my fear of darkness. But only the one who fears knows the pain and agony associated with it. During my early childhood days, I was told stories of ghosts and evil spirits that move around in the darkness of the night devouring people. Though I never completely believed in these stories, they still affected me to a certain extent. I couldn’t imagine myself walking on a deserted road in the dark or even keep my eyes shut for a few minutes. The darkness that I experience for those few minutes was sufficient to frighten me. But there comes  opportunities to make life better and it happened in my case too.

When I was in class eight, I had enrolled for the life skills program at my school. Every week, a topic was chosen on which interactive activities and discussions were held with an aim to inculcate those skills in children. That day, when I stopped fearing darkness, the topic chosen was concentration. Teams were formed and chairs were placed at random places in the playground. A person from each group was blindfolded who had to start from one end of the playground and reach the other end without colliding with any of the chairs. The other members of the group would give oral instructions to the blindfolded person to help him reach the goal. Member of the other groups were also allowed to give instructions - misleading ones. The blindfolded person needs to concentrate and filter out the correct instructions from the incorrect ones.

When it was my group’s turn, every student who was a part of my group starting shouting on top of their voice to be given the chance to get blindfolded while I stayed quiet. I couldn’t even bear the thought of being in darkness for a couple of minutes. The coordinator noticed it and selected me as the person who would be playing the game. I was afraid and resisted being blindfolded. But the coordinator insisted that I give a try. Finally, after a lengthy argument for ten minutes, I accepted to be blindfolded. The first few seconds were frightening but then, I started thinking of the goal that I had to accomplish. If I run away from the scene, the entire life skills program would have been a futile exercise for me. I kept thinking of those things that I liked the most and tried to divert my attention to the instructions rather than thinking about darkness.

And I finally reached the goal. I had overcome my fear of darkness.

This post has been written for Happy Hours.

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