Fear
is a paralyzing, crippling emotion. It
takes all of the joy of spontaneous living out of us. It keeps us off the paths of adventure and
exploration. It turns us sour on life
and people. It makes cowards of us.
I
was a very fearful boy. I was afraid of
the water and didn’t learn to swim until I took a beginning swim class in
college. I was determined to conquer
that fear that had kept me out of so many fun and happy moments growing
up. And in spite of the embarrassment and
terror of facing three mornings a week an Olympic size pool with a 15 foot deep
end, I did learn to swim. I was the only
non-swimmer in a class of 50 guys. I
couldn’t even dog paddle. But in the
last week of class I had to dive into the deep end, tread water for 2 minutes,
and then swim to the other end. I did all
of it and that class of guys lined the pool and watched and applauded when I finished
and stood up out of the shallow end. I
felt like some kind of hero.
Years
later I made sure my boys learned to swim when they were just toddlers. And I
have written here before about how Ingrid learned to swim last summer and what
a triumph that was for her.
I
have learned that life cannot be fully experienced in fear. Obviously we need to be vigilant and sensible
and responsible. But there is way too
much fear mongering in our society. It
is everywhere in the media. In fact, the
media survives on fear. They are
lavishly paid to promote it.
I watched “Meet the Press” recently. I finally turned it off in disgust. David Gregory, the host, was as usual overly
dramatic stirring up alarm and hand wringing about terrorists in the world out to get us. He’s still talking about the Boston
bombing. One of his guests that morning was former
New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani who blames president Obama’s lack of leadership for
the bombing and basically called him weak on terrorists. Gregory put up a photo of the three 19 year
old boys who are thought by fear fanatics and conspiracists to be somehow
linked to the surviving bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and, incredulously, linked to Al-Qaida.
Giuliani
kept calling them, “Those men.” Come
on. They are teenage punks who were
stupid enough to laugh off their school mate’s “prank” which then turned out to
be a horrifying act of murder. But there
is no proof those three were involved in any way other than to remove the
computer from Tsarnaev’s room and dumbly try to keep him from being implicated
in the bombing. And experts say there
was little sophistication in the bombs in spite of their deadly effects. No links to foreign terrorist groups. And yet Gregory hysterically raises all of
these fears about “the Homeland” being besieged by foreign terrorists.
Could
we possibly take a breath and be reasonable in this country? The media, the conspiracy theorists, the
sappy money driven political pundits, the crass terrorist book writers, the right
wing TV preachers, and the entertainment industry are all making loads and
loads of money off our fears. And worse
than that, they are turning us into a nation of bullies, raging gun owners,
haters of Islam and Muslims which most of us have never taken the time or the
interest to learn a single thing about.
We
just hastily, unintelligently believe whatever Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN tell us
to believe.
Unhealthy,
neurotic, obsessive fear is the fuel of anger, and that anger often leads to
all kinds of erratic acts of ignorance, bigotry, violence, and ultimately, the
loss of our freedom.
Who
is telling us today to face our fears, to understand them, to conquer them? Who is helping us to not give in to hate, to
stay away from rash judgments, to think about why anyone—a foreign terrorist, a
domestic terrorist, or a crazed gunman—wants to hurt and maim and kill
others? Who is helping us work through
any of that so we confront our fears logically, smartly, able then to
comprehend the issues and create constructive solutions?
My
mom, bless her, fed my fear of the water as a boy because she was terrified of the
water herself and never learned to swim.
But once I realized how much I was missing; once I got tired of making
excuses for not swimming with my friends; once I decided enough was enough and
I was going to beat that fear, and learn what I was capable of, I found a
courage I had never known. And a new way
to enjoy life.
We
need to encourage one another to not be so fearful. We need to think through our fears and not
just stay in them. If we keep feeding
our fears in this country we will remain in the shallow end of things always
avoiding real life, being suspicious and mistrusting of others, hiding from the
larger world, and staying forever trapped in limiting thoughts and actions.
Loren
Eiseley, the gifted anthropologist, studied nature and humans. He said he always wanted to crush his fears
and not be afraid of the future but welcome it and “salute” it. He wrote, “It is the salute of a gladiator
ringed by the indifference of the watching stars.”
There
is stoicism in those words but great courage too. Alone and together we can overcome the fears
that mock us today. And we must before
they ruin our future.
©
2013 Timothy Moody
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