Things Women Fear

"Let a woman see a mouse or hear a single flap after midnight," said a male acquaintance of mine recently, "and you can forget all this talk and talk about equalities."

He maybe right. For we women, it seems, are not quite the brave, self-reliant, competent creatures we like to believe we are.

Surveys have turned up nearly a hundred common fears that women harbour. If we are afraid of: snakes and spiders, getting fat, growing old, making a speech, staying alone at night, hurting people's feelings. We are worried that our children will fail or be rejected; we brood over criticism; we think that our loves will fly away from us; we are afraid that we will be thought too feminine or not feminine enough.

Of course, women could counter with considerable list of fears that men are heir to. But just as we are unlike men in our gifts and our ways of loving so we are unlike them in the things that frighten us. Men, psychologists discover, are more likely to worry about money and careers; women, about love and marriage. Men lie awake brooding just about possible surgery or a visit to the dentist, while women blithely dead to the hospital for a new baby, reflecting that they are going to have a little rest from household chores.

Not only are women afraid of different things, but also we behave differently under the stress of fear. Oppressed by the imminence of failure or the futility of the uni verse, a man is three times as likely to commit suicide. Women give vent to their anguish, instead. We weep more than men and ask for help more often. But if you think that we solve our fears any better or having wept over them, put then behind us for good, you are wrong. We often waste and paralyse our lives because we are afraid.

Take for instance, our biggest fear - people. Every test proves that women are more socially competent than men, yet we are the ones who are more frightened of other human beings. And because we are afraid, our intuitive capacity for getting along with others is often stymied before we can use it.

Fear does that to all of us. People want to love and understand us, but we don't let them. We are too busy worrying about the little personal mistakes we make. At the time we can't love others, either because we are so busy trying to  use them for reassurance that we don't see them as real people at all.

Another worry of most women is that we can't cope, that our responsibilities will be too much for us. Have we enough experience for this job? Is our opinion worth anything? In our fear, we turn down new experience much more often than men do: we are likely to try new jobs and new ways of life. "Well, all right," you may say, "but what can we do?"

Paradoxically, the first thing we must do is to admit that we are afraid. It is astonishing to how much trouble we go to hide our fears from ourselves. It's not, we think that we are afraid to meet strangers; we prefer a quiet life. It is not that we are afraid to express ourselves to those we love; it's just that reserve is more dignified.

Fear begins to retreat only when we accept it and say, "I'm frightened, but so is everyone else, and they go on getting things done." We would all feel better if we remembered that people are as much concerned with our option of them as we are with their opinion with us. They, too, are eager for approval. When we care about them and try to understand how troubled they are, we cannot be afraid of them.

Nor would fear make us inadequate of our responsibilities if we could persuade ourselves that there is nothing wrong with failure. A certain number of errors are par the course, and through long apprenticeship, men understand this better than women.

Most of women's fears are, after all the fears of tomorrow. It is not that we cannot cope with this moment, but that we might be able to cope next week, next month, next year. So it is calming to realize that many of the catastrophes we brood over never happen. And if we look back we will find that, when faced with a difficult situation, we had the power to meet it. We longed to avoid the dread experience. But it came, it is past, we survived.

Finally, there is no real way out of fear unless we believe in ourselves as women. The gifts of feminity are good gifts. We do not need more of the talents usually attributed to men: sense of competition, toughness, and rationality. But we do not need to use our intuitive capacities, our understanding and compassion.

Then, too, we should trust other people. How necessary this is for men, critical, as we are, afraid as we are of loosing those we love. Nearly always we keep the love we trust and find kindness when we expect it.

People will help us; life itself is geared to work for us. And in the end, it is here that our trust must lie: in the conviction that ebb and flow of joy and sorrow are a pattern in the hands of God. We are sustained wrote Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman, "by a universe than ourselves and preserved by a love beyond fathoming."

Courage is a way of saying "yes" to life. If the 20th century calls on women to be braver than ever before, it is our good fortune to live in these times. For only the brave are happy, only the brave are loved, only the brave are wise.

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Credits to my grandpa's sister.. All of these thoughts are her's and it was left unedited. Hope women would love it.