How fear leads to suffering by Yoda

Star Wars is and will always be a powerful series, of course regardless of how good a movie is, it's always going to be subjectively good or bad.

Yoda in star wars, specifically episode 1, the phantom menace made a profound quote about fear.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

The thing about fear is that it can hide within us, we may think we are simply being cautious or thinking ahead, but in reality fear controls you. Fear has the power to change without you noticing. One moment you may be worried about losing something, be it love, control, stability and then the next, you could lash out at someone for something they may not have even done. You're putting in a state of confusion and that makes you uncomfortable and that leads almost always directly to anger.

Anger gives some people a sense of power but anger usually originates out of fear. Anger is often nothing more than fear that has been blown up.

When two opponents are in a ring fighting and one opponent seems to be playing mind games with the other, the next thing that usually happens is that the other opponent gets frustrated with the minds games and gets angry. The objective was to get under the skin of the opponent. Usually the frustration is coming from the fear of being incapable of beating the opponent who's playing mind games and looking invincible and that fear leads to the anger which your opponent takes advantage of.

When anger is allowed to stay for a long time, it turns into hatred. Hatred can be expressed at different levels. A hateful personality can be loud and dramatic or quiet and subtle. Regardless of how it is expressed, it shuts off the possibility of connecting with others.

Then comes the suffering. Perhaps not the dramatic, movie style suffering but the everyday suffering that creeps into your mood, your relationships and your productivity at work.

You carry it without acknowledging it until someone asks, is everything ok? Then you start overreacting.

We do not always recognize it, but the entire cycle begins with that feeling we get when we feel small, threatened or unsure about ourselves or the future. To disrupt the cycle, we need to acknowledge this fear as soon as we identify it, deal with it and prevent the cycle from continuing.

Quote art made using Polish App android