The leaves blow across the street and our furnaces kick in for the first time since spring. The chill in the air has us desperately holding onto warmth, whether that means breaking out the knit sweaters and scarves or stubbornly refusing to give up summer just yet.
Fall, and October especially, brings an interesting mix of opposites into our lives. Cold and warm. Light and dark. Friendly ghosts and innocent pumpkin carvings alongside scary movies and terrifying haunted houses.
And because we like to have a little fun here at Kahanee, we decided to lean into the spooky season and put our own spin on it: fear.
Not just what scares us, but what happens when we get curious about it. What do our fears tell us about ourselves? About each other? About the world around us?
As a child, you see a shadow in your closet and a hanger becomes a hand reaching out to grab you, just like you were warned about in fairytales. A rundown house on your block must be filled with ghosts and monsters. The deep end of a pool holds tentacles and teeth waiting to pull you under.
But what happens when we don't have the full picture of our fears?
Take sharks. Sharks are a common fear, despite attacks on humans being incredibly rare. But most of us know sharks less through experience and more through the stories we've been told about them: teeth breaking the surface, ominous music, a fin circling in the distance, gore to follow.
And maybe that's part of what makes them so frightening. They exist in a world we can't fully see or understand. When you're swimming in the ocean, you don't know what's underneath you.
So our imagination fills in the rest.
And we've been practicing that for a long time.
The stories many of us grew up with taught us what monsters were supposed to look like. Witches were strange, unruly women living outside society. Wild animals lurked in forests and threatened livelihoods. Anyone who looked or behaved differently could become someone to fear.
Those stories don't disappear when we grow up.
The characters just change. We become afraid of uncertainty. Difference. Conflict. Awkward conversations. Places we've never been. People whose experiences we don't understand.
And sometimes an assumption feels easier.
No confrontation. No risk. No need to learn something new or challenge what we already believe. But what don't we know about the things we're afraid of?
Maybe that's where curiosity comes in.
The food you've never tried because you don't know how to eat it. The culture you only know through what "people say." The neighbourhood you've avoided because of the stories you've heard in the news.
What happens if, instead of letting the unknown stay unknown, we get a little closer?
Ask a question. Hear someone's story. Learn the history. Go somewhere new.
We aren't suggesting you stop being afraid of everything. We know spiders are just little guys doing important ecosystem work. That does not mean we'll be embracing them anytime soon! But maybe we can get curious about our fears.
Is there something here we need to fear? Or is there something here we simply don't understand yet? Sometimes, when we don't know the whole story, we tell ourselves one. Maybe it's worth finding out what we're missing.
Maybe it's worth finding out what we're missing.
