what is fear to you?

I am currently working on an essay about abstract words for my English class. We can pick an abstract word (ie: justice, love, freedom) and write an essay with our personal definitions, quotes, metaphors, such and such.

So I'd like to know how you guys would define fear. I won't put anything posted here in the essay unless I think its totally brilliant and worthy of some sort of accolade, I'd like to keep the ideas in the essay as much of my own as possible, but if I do use your material I will quote you properly.

Fear is the basis of human survival. Fear is logic. Fear is survival. Fear is a necessary evil. Fear is the base instinct within all of us that warns of danger, potential or real, because at the most basic level humans wish only to survive.

False

Evidence

Appears

Real

^Yeah I still beleave that:)

It is one of the many forms of Dukkha inherent in reality. It has it's uses, but I must learn to conquer it. I MUST AS LIKE A LION. While also not being stupidly fearless. More like...Entirely aware of the danger and threats and reality, but just able to face it without curling up in a useless ball of panic attacks.

In a less religious sense...That thing that annoys me all the time.

Fear is falling naked into a gorilla enclosure.

Fear is the unknown. Fear is also a primal response for survival.
In my opinion. For myself, not knowing in a dark room for example, being alone most of all.

Fear is the hole in things. It is the darkness behind you, creeping up on your flank in such a way that no matter how you turn it's always behind you. It's the monsters in your closet that are never there when the lights are on. It is the difference between what your eyes can see is and what your brain is telling you might be.

Don't we have a thread on this already?

There's a thread about what scares you, not the same thing.

Fear is seeing something off--Compared to normal day to day experience--and your subconscious warning you to leave, or brace yourself for what's coming. When the fear had no true payoff(Something actually lurking in the shadows, etc.) your mind constantly expects something, ripping you apart from the inside. That is fear.