❄️ Freezethawed: The Newsletter #003 - Become A Scientist Of Your Own Fear

Hello girls, boys and germs!

It has been a rather eventful week at work for all the wrong reasons with a lot of unexpected jump scares along the way.

Earlier this week, on Monday, one of our assistant professors tested positive for COVID-19. She was, for the most part asymptomatic with occasional bouts of dry cough. But then this led to all of us questioning our immunity and tracing back our steps to look for moments of significant contact with her. We still await for symptoms to crop up in us while we continue working.

Also towards the end of the week we received news that even Ophthalmology residents would be participating actively in COVID-19 ward duties. I remember us joking back in April about how serious this pandemic would actually have to be for Ophthalmology residents to also be roped into regular COVID-19 duties. Well, now we know.

All these near scares led me to think about the role of fear in our lives as well as the looming fear due COVID-19 brings. On one of the episodes of The Tim Ferris Show podcast, this has been aptly explained. Whatever I’m sharing below are excerpts from The Fear Book by Cheri Huber, which I’ve myself not read but have picked up some insights which resonated with me, thanks to the podcast episode.

“Moving towards your fears and getting past them is the path to freedom. If you no longer believe what fear tells you, you will live and it will not. That is the point on the spiritual journey that almost no one gets past. When that terror arises, when it gets backed into a corner and it is a matter of its survival or yours, almost nobody has the required combination of courage, desperation or willingness to stand up to it. That is why it is soo important to remember that what is really being screamed here is that if I stay with this fear, I will die. Its life is your death, and its death is your life.
Do something you fear, not to conquer the fear, not to accomplish a task but to familiarise yourself with the process with which fear protects itself to demistify it. Become a scientist of your own fear.”

Hope this small excerpt helps you overcome whatever fear you face in your life.

Until next time,
Anujeet.

A nurse pulled three newborns out of a hospital hit by the Beirut blast
A really interesting read I want to share with you all this week.
Click Here