Fear.  The world is driven by fear.  The more I think about it, the more I realize that many of my choices and many of the choices of those around me are the result of fear.  What will happen if I don’t do this? I live every day with some amount of fear and indeed somedays it’s more than others.  I think that fear can absolutely be healthy, it keeps us from doing things that are dangerous, it helps us to recognize when we are at risk and sometimes it can force us to do things that are scary, because we afraid of what happens if we don’t.  That’s where I’m at right now.  Here I am in Costa Rica and it’s scary, everything is different and inaccessible but the thought of returning home is far more scary than the thought of staying here.  I bring up fear because I think that my fear is causing me to filter behavior in a certain way and additionally I watched a Costa Rican tradition that is ripe with the confrontation of fear. 

This weekend I visited a family friend who lived in the US and was very close to my family when I was a child.  This trip brought about all kinds of emotions that I was not prepared to receive.  We ate Pancakes for breakfast, I took a hot shower, I watched a movie on a projection screen and I spoke English with a family.  It was amazing to have this semblance of home but at the same time it reminded me of precisely the things about home that I miss.  It was wonderful and horrible at the same time, but rest assured dear family that I have a family and a home in Costa Rica that I can visit whenever I need a break, or wireless internet.  It was on the way home from this visit that something fear provoking happened to me.   I was walking to my bus stop in San Jose when (per usual) some men started whistling, making kissing noises saying the things they say and just being pretty typical.  As this was happening a man approached me from the other side and linked arms with me and began talking to me.  Hey, how are you, where are you from, where are you going, who do you know, and a series of other questions that to me just seemed weird.  Throughout the entire experience I was keeping an eye on my backpack, and looking out for other people that might be working with this guy.  I was flat out scared at this point.  I was having a difficult time focusing on his words and his questions because I was so concerned about what was happing with my stuff, what were this guys intentions and most importantly, how was I going to get away.  As soon as a cross street came up I jerked my arm away and told him that I was meeting my family around the corner, I immediately put people between us but he watched me walk away for five minutes.  I am still reconciling what happened to me.  Was this guy concerned about that stupid gringa walking down the street with her blonde hair and red dress being obviously gringa?  It’s possible that he recognized the amount of attention I was receiving and was attempting to mitigate the situation by associating me with a Costa Rican.  My first thought was negative though, my fear was telling me that this guy was trying to rob me, or was spotting me so that his friends could find me later.  How do I put my fear in a cultural context so that I can still use it to protect me without impeding my ability to form relationships?

On Monday I went to “Torros a la Tica”  and while I will try to explain this occurrence with words,  I highly recommend that everyone get on facebook and look at the 100+ photos I have of the event.  This is sort of like a cross between a rodeo and the running of the bulls in Spain.  Basically all of these people (mostly young men, but sometimes young girls who want to impress the boys) get into this arena and they wait for a bull to come jumping into the ring.  The bull is usually pissed because he has some rope tied around his belly and its annoying, additionally all these people are shouting at him and I’m sure that’s probably pretty scary too.  So the bull is afraid, of course, and the bull Is attempting to mitigate that fear by attacking people around him.  The whole idea of the event for the people is to prove how brave you are by getting close enough to the bull to touch him.  Fear is telling these people to do exactly the opposite but the whole idea is to fight your fear and confront it head on.  Of course it is reasonable to be afraid of running head on to meet an angry, fearful bull but what would be the point of putting the bull in the ring if everyone was going to follow their instincts and run away?  The whole idea behind this tradition is to face your fear, to show the world that you are the master of all that is scary and you control it.  It was certainly an interesting experience and while some people talked about how the bulls should have been treated better, I like that in this scenario the bull has far more chance to injure the human than the human to the bull. 

Perhaps the metaphor here is that we should be facing our fears head on rather than allowing them to affect our lives so profoundly.  What do you think about all this?  How does fear affect our cultural lense?