A Word About Fear

[Fear] is life's only opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary ... it has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake ... your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss you last allies; hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you ...

The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation ... nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks ... because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

pp. 161-162
Life of Pi by Yann Martel