Fear

A dear friend of mine lives much of the time in fear. If its not one thing, its another. Fear can be crippling, consuming, and demanding, always wanting to be fed. Much of what we took for granted as security grows more uncertain all the time. My father and uncles stayed at the same jobs most of their adult lives. Retiring after decades of service to one company. Loyalty accounted for a lot back a generation or so. There was more of a spirit of working together instead of each man out for his own self. Even on the television shows we see this pervasive cut throat attitude of self interest within companies. So often it is motivated by fear. Watching your own back, just expecting to get stabbed in the back by a co-worker or being fired out of jealously. It's hard to stop a cycle like that, simply because so often the nice guy doesn't win. I suspect some of this attitude of "each man for himself" is nurtured in ego centered sports where being the best is all about personal achievement rather than team work. As adults, it doesn't always make us more secure, but more fearful in some respects because when you are king of the hill, you can get pushed off that spot by someone just a bit more goal oriented than you. There is not much security in being at the top, or even while you are climbing that proverbial ladder of success. Holding on white knuckled is not much fun.

There is a lot of fear regarding job security these days. There is a lot of fear regarding health these days too. We have an ache in our foot, search on line and instantly see about 50 different life threatening diseases that have foot pain associated with them. It's scary ! But we may have just hurt our foot when we tripped over the toy on the floor and forgotten about the event.

Every day we are bombarded with news stories about hazardous chemicals in our environment, in our food, in our clothes, our carpeting, and even the very furniture we sit on. We become fearful, justifiably so in many cases. But fear can over take us, become the foundation for our every action, take the steering wheel and force us to go places we don't really want to. Fear might just be the captain at the wheel for us, taking us on a very limited course. Fear is a funny thing, most often it is bigger, greater than reality. Fear likes to use our imagination. A few facts peppered with fantasy of the worst kind. I know you all understand that healthy fear is necessary in life, its a shield and protector when needed, but that's not the kind of fearfulness I am talking about, I am talking about the fears that consume. When one fear builds upon another until reason seems lost. I think there is a cure, (O.K. right here let me state this is just my thoughts about normal life fears that get kinda bossy for us, not deep psychological stuff ) recognize fear when it pops up, stop the thought for a moment, use reason, think about the actual probability of this happening and think about prevention. Be informed about the facts of the matter and consciously stop yourself from thinking so fearfully. Don't be counting out all the worst things that might, maybe could happen. Fear of this nature isn't positive.

Dorothy Thompson said, "Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light." And Marie Curie said, "Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."

Pretty good wisdom contained in those two quotes..

I say, take the time spent being fearful and use it for becoming stronger for the real storms in life