what's your biggest fear?

what's the biggest fear you have? i've had a lot of them through the years. since i was little, i have been terrified of heights--even when i was a toddler, if my mom would sit me on the counter or table to help her do something, i would seriously freak out. later that ended up giving me a HUGE fear of airplanes--one that i have dealt with, and gotten over, slowly.

i also used to have a huge fear of spiders. not small spiders, but the big ones. maybe it's their legs, or how they move--or those wolf spiders, that can jump. it just freaks me out. and snakes. the way snakes slither, and how sneaky and fast they can be...that really freaks me out. but last semester, i took this natural history class where i actually had to be around HUGE spiders (like BIGGER than my hand kind of spiders), and snakes. i still don't like them, but i'm not quite so scared of them anymore.

so my question, really, is this...why are we so afraid? so afraid of failure, so afraid of loss, so afraid of betrayal and loneliness...i don't have a solution for it. however, in my past experiences, riding on an airplane helped calm my fears of planes. being around spiders helped me to freak out less when i saw a spider in my apartment. and yet, being rejected and lonely hasn't helped any of my fears of being lonely or being rejected but instead made them deeper and much more powerful.

so my solution to this is to throw worry to the wind...i want to live like switchfoot's new song, "awakening."

here we are now with the falling sky and the rain,
we're awakening
here we are now with the desperate youth in pain,
we're awakening
maybe it's called ambition, but you've been talking in your sleep
about a dream,
we're awakening

i want to wake up kicking and screaming
i want to wake up kicking and screaming
i want to know that my heart's still beating,
it's beating, i'm bleeding.
i want to wake up kicking and screaming
i want to live like i know what i'm leaving
i want to know that my heart's still beating,
is beating, is beating, it's beating, i'm bleeding