I’m watching the weather rather closely today. There are blue skies, a few big, fat clouds and a gentle breeze but it looks like it could rain again at any time. The forecast is not cut and dried and yesterday there was a tornado in Derbyshire. Not looking promising for the skydive tomorrow.

In the time it has taken to write these few lines and make another much needed coffee the sky has turned from blue to heavily laden with black clouds, the temperature has dropped and the rain has once more begun.

My sons will be watching developments with mixed feelings. They want to do this skydive… it is something they have always wanted to do…and it is for a children’s charity… and yet, whether they speak of it or not, there is an inevitable nervousness about the whole affair. What is there to worry about? What could possibly go wrong, you might ask? People do this all the time… for fun… Let’s not go there. Not until after they have jumped. The thought of simply stepping out into thin air, a mile in the sky, for the first time has to be daunting. The only way is down and there is only a thin sheet of silk between you and being more intimately acquainted with the ground than is either healthy or desirable. They have my admiration. They often do.

My sons have faced a lot over the past few years and know that whatever can happen, can, potentially happen to you. No-one is exempt. But rather than dwell upon the negatives they have learned how to live and face their fears and that is a major achievement for anyone.

‘Fear’ is one of those words we often hide from. We allude to it in a myriad of ways… speaking of nervousness, mixed feelings, worry, being daunted…as I have here. Yet they all refer back to a human emotion that we all share and often shy away from. It has its uses. We fear the things we perceive as potentially dangerous or harmful. It doesn’t matter that the pale white worm is both tiny and harmless, or that the spider on the ceiling doesn’t bite, or even that the dentist with his drill is trying to help… our perception of danger is what shapes our fear and that may owe nothing to logic.

I, for instance, am afraid of stairs. Not going up them… no problem at all… but coming down. It doesn’t matter how wide or safe they are, if they have handrails or are of marble of wood. They bother me and have done since I was a child. Ladders I am fine with… towers, no problem… half a dozen steps? Ridiculous! But the knowledge that there is no sensible basis for the fear doesn’t stop it from reminding me of its existence several times a day.

These are the easiest fears to face; the ones we know are groundless. It doesn’t make them any less real or crippling when you are caught in the grip of them, especially from those who have a real phobia, but they are easier to confront and overcome when you can see how illogical they are. Less easy to deal with are the more abstract fears that haunt the recesses of our minds and emotions… things we may not even be able to pin down long enough to identify or begin to understand, but which cast a nebulous shadow over our lives. We often deal with them simply by justifying their existence, finding apparently logical reasons for why they are necessary or reasonable.

The thing is, of course, that fear is always a conditioned response, something we have learned. It might be an evolutionary fear that is now pretty much ingrained genetically… fear of heights or snakes have both been quoted as such. Most of our fears however are the result of experience. They may not relate directly to events we have lived, but have become associated in our minds with something which was, at some point, a genuine source of fear… the perception, justified or otherwise of a threat or the memory of an event that caused actual harm. Regardless of their source, our fears can cause us to react in strange, often aberrant ways that are outside our personal parameters in other circumstances.

Now I am not a fan of anything following me around uninvited and creeping up on me unawares, and that it how fear operates. I would rather turn and face it, see it for what it truly is and then the shadow that looked like a monster may turn out to be that of a mouse… and I like mice, but even so I wouldn’t want them running wild in the house. By taking the time to examine the roots of our fears and finding the hidden monster that casts the shadow we often find them groundless in truth, blown up by our imagination and instinct for self-preservation into a monster far greater than their source merits.

We can use our fears to spur us onwards, to keep ourselves safe from harm and even to give us a breathing space while we examine it, in which we can consider our course of action. It can be a positive thing, allowing us to take precautions, but it should not be allowed to rule our days. We miss out on so much when we allow that to happen.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, my sons will run the gamut of their fears whilst I, as Mum watching, will almost inevitably smile encouragement while swallowing my own. Wish them luck and fair weather.