WHY FEAR?

Growing up, I was afraid to look a beautiful woman in the eyes. I still am, actually.
Part of me is afraid I will look in her eyes and see her laughing at what she sees. Another part of me is afraid I will look in her eyes and realize she doesn't even see me.
I don't know where that fear comes from. It has no basis in fact or reality, nor can I say looking into a beautiful woman's eyes is dangerous, for me or any other man. I've been so afraid to do it, so I can't say this fear is based on some lived-out experience. I can say that when I was younger I often did see disgust and disbelief on the face of a pretty woman when I asked her out on a date.
But then that is the problem with fear, isn't it? It usually has no basis in experience or reality. What is prejudice but a form of fear? And yet most prejudiced people I know have had no real-life experience with those they fear. If they did, then maybe I could understand the fear.
When I was in high school, I got mugged in the park by a group of Hispanic teens. That experience could have prejudiced me against Hispanics or given me an overgrown fear of them. But it did not. I do not know why it did not, it just didn't.
So where do our fears come from? Why, for example, might a woman fear men as much as I fear looking into the eyes of a beautiful woman? She has good reason for her fear, having been abandoned by an abusive father and then disrespected and abused by so many men since then, including a controlling and overbearing spouse. And yet her fear of men may well have driven into just such a relationship because she was afraid to open up to a man, to be vulnerable to a man, to truly love a man.
So what can we do to keep our fears from ruling our lives and keeping us from those who truly love us?
Sometimes it takes just one person to break through the walls of fear and give love a chance. Sometimes it takes just one moment of courage to stand up to a fear and, in doing so, diminish it in the light of a new day.
Sometimes it just takes a single, brave individual to make a life-altering change, to reach away from fear and toward love, to put fear in its place.