Have you ever been home alone? And scared?
That feeling of someone in the house even when you are alone.
That feeling of something running past a doorway you notice out of the corner of your eye.
The feeling of hearing voices when you are half asleep.
The feeling of helplessness when the power goes out and you have no clue where your phone or your candles are. Even simple tasks like going to the toilet or getting a glass of water from the kitchen become a mighty task. A mighty task due to the darkness.
We are all rational people.
But then why is our courage directly proportional to the amount of light around us?
A lot of it has to do with imagination. Let’s make it very clear – no one of us has been attacked by ghosts yet. No one. For the past 2 decades. But when the power goes out, we still picture the scary bogeyman waiting in the darker corner of your house – lurking, waiting, to kill you.
Somehow we end to throw logic right out of the window as the power goes out and accept the fact that now is the time we are going to die.
But you reach for your phone.
You find the candles.
You wait for the lights to come on.
And there is no bogeyman.
And then we do something so routine, that it still doesn’t feel like routine –
We laugh at ourselves to think that we were silly enough to be scared like that. Very funny.
Until the next time the darkness falls, and all courage will go to hell.
It is a vicious cycle.
How do you stop feeling this scared?
We have a hack for you.
Go ahead and close your eyes.
Visualize the face of the worst person you have met.
Now visualize the things that person has done to you.
Feel the hate and anger yet?
Now that person is lurking in your apartment when the lights go out.
You will be scared. You know you think that there is a boogeyman hidden in the darkness, but you will not care. You are angry. And anger always trumps fear.
You would want to confront the bogeyman and then tear it to bits with your bare hands.
The next time you are angry, observe yourself. You would not give a damn about a ghost or the dark.
Somehow, anger makes us rational – at least where ghosts are concerned.
Try it. It works.
