Fear.

A lot of people are afraid of dying. But this fear of death does not prevent them from death. It just prevents them from living. Every one has to die in the end. Why not try living in the meantime? Fear is a crippling thing. It paralyzes our ability to think clearly. Our thoughts become muddled and obscure. This obscurity makes it impossible for us to understand situations. That leads to further intensifying of fear. A situation that is fearsome for a person may not at all be so for another person. This is because fear is created from the way we interpret a given situation. When we are in a fearful state of mind, we tend to see frightening side in all the events that we come across. This adds to our misery. In most cases, it is just a sequence of scenes in our thoughts and imagination that keeps on nourishing our fears. By intervening into the seemingly unstoppable train of thoughts that automatically runs in our mind, we can take hold of the situation. Resolving the root cause of such thoughts is the key to the ultimate ability to stop such thoughts from occurring in our mind. And then they can be replaced with better, more realistic thoughts. Fear is damaging for our life. Instead of just surrendering to it, ways to get rid of fear must be sought seriously.