I think it’s a very dangerous thing to allow yourself to be intimidated.
Because as soon as you do, you feel like you have to please someone else. And then you’re effectively enslaved.
Like the villagers and the Shadow Giant…
Once, a young traveling woman entered a village and immediately noticed how downcast, demoralized and afraid all the inhabitants seemed to be.
She was told by a trembling villager that each evening a terrible giant, revealed as a silhouette against the skyline, would come and terrorize them.
He would stand seemingly a mile high and demand they make sacrifices to please him and that if they didn’t there would be terrible consequences. They were eager to fulfill his every demand.
But the girl was unafraid. And that evening as twilight approached, rather than hurry to hide she waited for the giant’s shadow to appear.
Suddenly there it was, towering and booming, threatening and demanding. The girl now did something that astonished the villagers.
Rather than cower with the rest of them she began to walk towards the shadowy menace. And as she did so a strange thing happened.
The closer she got, the smaller the giant became.
Eventually, she as she drew near, she was the giant compared to it. She picked up the former “giant” in her hand.
“What is your name, O creature that shrinks as I approach you?” asked the young woman.
The now tiny former giant replied: “My name is… fear!”
And it was then that it disappeared, freeing the villagers from their misery.