A friend of mine told me this week that we are all controlled by fear. I don’t agree with that at all. If you have seen the film ‘Inside out’ you know that we are controlled by several emotions. In the film ‘Joy’, ‘Anger’, ‘Sadness’, ‘Disgust’ and ‘Fear’ are all working the control board in the brain. The film has a clear message that joy can’t exist without sadness and that fear stops us from doing stupid things or hurting ourselves.

The film also shows what happens when emotions ‘go missing’. ‘Sadness’ and ‘Joy’ get lost in the brain. They are taken out of head quarters by mistake and throughout the film they are trying to get back to headquarters. In the meantime ‘Disgust’, ‘Anger’ and ‘Fear’ are in charge and they are really messing with Riley’s life. This shows me that when only part of our emotions are working, things aren’t right. So if fear was in charge all the time we wouldn’t be able to function normally. But then again what is normal?

I have to admit that recently my head seems to be controlled by anger. I also thought that throughout the last few years, sadness and anger were more dominant emotions in my life. It made me think what do I actually fear? There is an existential fear of losing my job, without which I had no money and so on. What else do I fear or am I scared of? What are you scared of? Do you think you are controlled by fear?