Fear

"The fear of death must be dreaded more than death itself."

Since the dawn of time man has been driven forward by two base instincts: Survival and Fear.
The first drove him towards discoveries such as fire, the wheel, electricity, and all major inventions of out time. The latter is what kept him alive.
Some may argue that the need to survive is what kept men alive throughout the ages, but the survival need only kept us going through the years. If man was not afraid of the world around him he would leap into an inferno the first time he encountered it. He would walk off a cliff; he would go investigate when he would hear a pack of unknown beasts snarling in the distance. It is fear of these things, the fear of dying, the fear of the "monster" that stopped him from doing these things, and thus preserving his own life.

Fear was not put in our emotional spectrum to keep us from doing things that we would otherwise enjoy doing, it is there to control us. It is our mind's way of saying "I don't think that's such a good idea". Fear is a barrier put up by our inner-selves in order to keep us alive and maintain a healthy, productive life style. It is a means of self-control.

So should we just give in to our fears, lay awake at night, shaking and petrified?
No. Fear does need to be conquered. Just like any other means pf control, it must have its limit. For control without limits is oppression, which is worse than no control at all. So the little 3 year old, lying in his bed, afraid of the monster in closet must know that there is no such thing. But at the same time he must know that there are things in this world which can hurt him. Monsters-in-a-closet that he must always be wary of, whether they be dangerous predators out in the Australian outback, or people which are stronger than him, and will crush him like a bug if he tries to face them.

People should stand up to their fears, challenge themselves in new ways, and "live on the wild side". But at the same time they must remember that they are not immortal, not invulnerable, and they, like everybody else, have their limits. Those limits are the physical manifestations of our fears, the things that we simply cannot do, no matter how hard we try. We must embrace our fears; learn to listen and heed their warnings, and occasionally, act alongside those warnings, and not always to fight them, hoping to beat the monster that lives in our closet.