August 26, 2016
This book was a delightful surprise. It was just what I was looking for on a topic that I am very interested in, Fear. Often I have thought that all human emotions and feelings could be boiled down to two basic forces fear and love. This has always been an elusive and easily misunderstood topic for me. Fear is a shadow that is always present but rarely noticed. My interest in this subject stemmed from the idea that fear may be the opposite of love. This intrigued me because I thought the two couldn't be more different, let alone have any relationship towards each other.
This book is about fear without the love. Which is fine, I just think some people could easily misuse the contents of this book for ill. Essentially this book is about overcoming fear with the backdrop story being the life of rapper/entrepreneur Curtis Jackson also known as 50 cent. He defied all odds from an early age and even though he was set back, shot at, threatened, he never backed down from life and living what he believed his destiny. Powerful and life-altering lessons can be drawn from his experience and that is where Robert Greene comes in and points them out. Underneath everything Fear is nothing more than an unacceptance of our mortality. It is repressed, ignored, avoided and run from really at our own ironic peril. Fear means we can't come to grips with death. We hold on to things when we should let go, we care about things when we shouldn't, we let ourselves be dominated when we are stronger. Death to comes to us all, the rich and powerful as well as the weak and poor. The sooner we accept and confront this reality the sooner we can be liberated from it. Through that liberation life takes on a dazzling new perception and depth. Death isn't the Tragedy, the life not lived is. The greatest irony of all is that we are more afraid of ourselves than we are of anything else. Lifetimes are wasted making excuses for ourselves on why we aren't good enough, fast enough, smart enough, strong enough, caring enough and it is all a lie we feed ourselves to escape the responsibility of being more.
This book is about fear without the love. Which is fine, I just think some people could easily misuse the contents of this book for ill. Essentially this book is about overcoming fear with the backdrop story being the life of rapper/entrepreneur Curtis Jackson also known as 50 cent. He defied all odds from an early age and even though he was set back, shot at, threatened, he never backed down from life and living what he believed his destiny. Powerful and life-altering lessons can be drawn from his experience and that is where Robert Greene comes in and points them out. Underneath everything Fear is nothing more than an unacceptance of our mortality. It is repressed, ignored, avoided and run from really at our own ironic peril. Fear means we can't come to grips with death. We hold on to things when we should let go, we care about things when we shouldn't, we let ourselves be dominated when we are stronger. Death to comes to us all, the rich and powerful as well as the weak and poor. The sooner we accept and confront this reality the sooner we can be liberated from it. Through that liberation life takes on a dazzling new perception and depth. Death isn't the Tragedy, the life not lived is. The greatest irony of all is that we are more afraid of ourselves than we are of anything else. Lifetimes are wasted making excuses for ourselves on why we aren't good enough, fast enough, smart enough, strong enough, caring enough and it is all a lie we feed ourselves to escape the responsibility of being more.