"...fear is my teaching ground."

This is very rational. I learned to cherish my fear, living in the wilderness. At first it was debilitating. Twigs would snap in the pitch black of night, and every sort of horror would come into my imagination, causing such anxiety I could not sleep. There were very dangerous bears, and they certainly did present a threat to me, where I was camped. But no amount of anxiety would either reduce or increase that threat, neither save me nor cause me to die.

Eventually fear became an incentive to keep a clean camp, to avoid salmon streams for campsites, to keep my gun in good condition and to maintain my skill using it. Once I let it drive me to do these things, anxiety wasn't useful anymore, so I became comfortable living in fear, and it didn't raise my blood pressure anymore.

We all are fooled, too, from time to time. Just as it does us no good to tremble with anxiety because there are threats, neither do we benefit from denial, or too powerful shame for getting sucked into some scam. When I was young and had fire in the belly, sometimes I would endeavor to oppose being scammed and seek to out scam scammers. Inevitably this never worked as well as I hoped, and I always realized I could have put my time and effort to better use.

I have personified the helpless inventor for most of my life. I am still working on inventions, on funding them and the time and place to work on them. However I have seen several of them be produced by others, and have realized that I am not necessary to humanity to bring such things into existence. Plenty of others have the same ideas, and some of them are in better circumstances to make them.

Overall, I have learned to be content that I have lived, raised my kids, and will die. It is more than I deserved, better than I expected, and all any of us can ask of the world.