A life lived in fear is a life half lived

Today during class, we watched Strictly Ballroom, and it's a nice show. Watched it before during social psych class, but now watch it again. One of the phrase that comes out often is this phrase

A life lived in fear is a life half lived

Let's put some thoughts onto that phrase shall we? In the context of the story, the message that it wants to gets across to us audience is that we should strive to fulfill our dreams and should not fear of living out our dreams. It's a good quote, and a good advice, but to me, it seems unrealistically optimistic.

Fear is a good thing. Or at least i think it is. Fear makes us learn. Fear makes us think of the consequences of things before acting upon a decision. If we don't fear, then we don't learn and act without thinking. Without fear, there will be no order in this world. In fact, many principles of today's life works on this premise.

Law is one of those. Punishment for people who commit crime is based on fear. The argument is that if the people fear the punishment, then they would be less likely to commit crimes. whether or not the punishment is justly made is another matter all together, but that's the basic premise of law i suppose.

by being fearful, one would need to think of the repercussion. but where is the line between being brave and acting stupid? scolding people in front of a crowd, brave or stupid? confessing one's love to another who, where it's almost impossible for the 2 to have a relationship, brave or stupid? pursuing one's dream without thinking much of the consequences, brave or stupid?

No easy answer.. and there is always no easy answer to questions like this :S

God Bless~