We have been sitting in a home with all kinds of facilities, the best of the food, and all kinds of luxuries may be available to us, but if we have pain in any part of the body, or apprehension of some disease, or apprehension of some financial trouble, we will not be happy. Our brain has been designed to prioritise pain signals. It is because we will enjoy all those pleasures only if we survive. That’s why survival gets top priority, and any alert about a threat to survival does the same to us. We have come together as a society, and therefore, some alerts, such as those for scorpions or snakes, have become rare. But at the same time, alerts about the loss of money, job, social reputation, social validation, and peer approval have become quite regular. 

The fundamental fear remains the same. Fear that our existence is under threat. That creates an unpleasant sensation in our bodies which we want to somehow get rid of. That’s why the brain’s entire focus shifts to eliminating that sensation. There should not be any problem with this. Yes, of course. But do we recall the story of the shepherd who raised a false alarm to the villagers for help? When the villagers got used to the false alarm, and he was actually under threat, nobody came to help him out. The smoke detector in our building often goes off by mistake, and everybody has become so used to it that when the alarm is real, we may actually ignore it. False alarms have a high cost. They tend to reduce the intensity and seriousness of the true alarm.

Now, when we experience fear, the body prepares us for action. When we see a snake, our bodies prepare us to fight or flee. What will happen if we get an alarm 10 times a day? The body prepares us to take action, and we take no action. What will happen when we press the accelerator fully with the hand brake also on? The car will not move an inch, which will put a lot of pressure on the engine. Similarly, when we raise that alarm 10 times a day and take no action, the body will get exhausted. We will feel depleted. 

So, what to do? The fear is real. Every time the boss bullies us, a colleague takes away credit dishonestly, there is a crisis in the economy, there is a war among countries, there is political instability, there is a crisis in close relationships, there is a fight with a spouse, there is a health crisis, or there is a fight to make a place in the organisation, or a student has anxiety for examination or is “chopped” in the language of Gen Zs, the threat is real. People will ignore, bully, take credit, make us feel small, and there may be many such instances in a day. Then what do we do? The body will definitely experience unpleasant sensations, and we would like to eliminate them.

That brings us to self-examination and critical analysis. Have we ever thought about why we feel bad about all these things? probably because our parents, elders, and peers behaved the same way, and we just copied that. Parents would feel bad when people said something bad about them, and we copied and started feeling bad when people said bad words about us. Peers would feel happy when they won the first prize, and we, too, shared that feeling. We will feel happy when we get the award and praise, and sad when we are criticised. We have copied and pasted all these behaviour patterns without ever examining ourselves to see what we want to do in life. Our fire alarm is not sensitive enough to distinguish cigarette smoke from fire smoke. We can’t keep the smokers out of the building. The building is so huge that we can’t help it. We can’t control the people and situations around us. Therefore, we will have to program the smoke detector well.

We can’t program our alarm system well unless we understand ourselves. What do we want to do in life? What is the purpose of life? Once we are clear as to what we want to do in life, it’s very easy to program our alarm system. If we have a very good use of our time, and have built on the activities we like, so many things will not matter to us. We don’t need people’s appreciation to write what we like to write. When we write what we like, it does not matter whether people like it or not. However, when we write to get applause, it matters a lot, and we will be disappointed every time our writing goes unnoticed. Then we need to examine why we want that applause, and we will discover some unfounded fear around social validation. The more we examine, the more we realise its futility. We keep being afraid of the darkness or ghosts until we examine the fear. The more we examine the self, the more we get to see the hollowness of many fears. Most fears are just unexamined mental stories. On the other hand, when we examine ourselves, we realise our true passions and explore them further. Self-examination is the only way to reprogramme the internal alarm system. The more we examine ourselves critically, the more we drop the unexamined mental stories and fears, and the more we connect to life.