Let’s understand how “Nothing to Fear Day” came into existence. It was the year 1941 when the President of America said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, and announced a state of national emergency as a response to Nazi Germany’s ultimatums about world domination. Since then, May 27th is observed as the Nothing to Fear Day.

What is the psychology of fear?

Experts believe that everyone has a genetic predisposition to fear. Just as we have other emotions from childhood, we have the emotion of fear ingrained in our minds. Fear of something gets induced in the human mind in two ways. One is through one’s own experience, for example a traumatic car accident that induces a fear of driving. While, some fears are thrust upon us by others like fear from fire. As toddlers we do not know that fire could harm us, it is the elders who teach us that fire can harm us or something very hot can be painful for us. That’s why we are always warned to not be playing around the fireplace, cooking area or should be still when someone around us is having tea or coffee, till the point we develop that fear inside us. Similarly, we are induced fear of a lot of other things like fear of remaining unemployed if we do not develop our employability skills like education, soft skills, leadership skills etc.

Does phobia mean fear?

Extreme or irrational fear is a phobia. Generally, it emerges in childhood. Some people also connect it to past life experiences as phobias are also unexplained in many cases. Some people have a phobia of driving and they do not even try to drive due to their phobia of it. Some people have a phobia of getting into an aircraft and covering a journey flying. Reasons for these are unknown whereas some phobias like dog phobia is a common phobia which one develops either by seeing others or having a very bad experience of a dog bite.

It is unlikely that we will ever be able to live without fear

If we take it in the literal sense, it is really impossible to be fear-free. It cannot happen with even the toughest of men. Even the most powerful or most physically strong man would have fear of losing one’s loved ones and things like that. On a larger scale too, if we think of fear, we can never get out of it as there are so many things that we fear and want to protect our beautiful world from. We fear the loss of drinking water, we fear the extinction of many wonderful species of birds and animals, we fear havoc caused by all sorts of pollution and the fear that tops everyone’s list today is the fear of coronavirus.

However, by just navigating the internet, if we come across something like “Nothing to Fear Day”, then we can at least sit back and contemplate on what fears we have and what solutions we can think of combating them so that our future generations are at a stage where what is causing fear to us right now, become non-existent for them. At least we can hope this much if not about a day when there would be nothing to fear at all.