Fear

“Fear is the mind killer.”
- Frank Herbert

We live in a culture of fear. We are paralyzed by it. Corporations design advertisements that show us how we should look, how we should dress and what we should eat. The implied message is that if we don’t buy, we’ll be less than those around us. Does a person need a large plasma TV if they can see the screen on the current one just fine? No, but commercials subtly imply that every important person has one.

The government uses fear to rally support. The news media use fear to boost ratings. Social groups and businesses use fear to influence and motivate. Families use fear to control behaviors and interactions. Every corner of our lives is filled with it.

There’s always talk about reducing stress. The root of stress is fear. Fear of failure. Fear of humiliation. Fear of not being loved. We should be talking about reducing fear. Some would have us believe that bravery conquers fear. No. A brave person is one who is afraid, but continues on in the face of that fear. That is one way to continue on. Bravery, like all virtues, is only attained through practice. We are not all brave, but we could all practice bravery. Even still, some would never achieve it.

It is our firm belief that all people deserve to live free of fear. Since we cannot all become brave, another solution is called for. So, in order to eliminate fear, we must find the root of fear.

In the past, people struggled to meet their basic needs: food, shelter and safety. This sort of fear is instinctive and necessary. If you are starving, or out in the cold, or in physical danger, your primary focus needs to be on meeting the basic needs.

Once the basic needs are met, other, more complicated needs arise. The needs for friendship, love, acceptance and fulfillment are all relevant to our happiness. The attainment of friendship, love, acceptance and fulfillment occupies most of our thoughts. Sometimes, we even act rashly or recklessly in order to have these things. And other times, we are downright vicious and cruel in the name of love, friendship, acceptance and fulfillment. These are powerful needs.

When our needs are not met, we become desperate. That’s when we fear. We fear that these needs will not be met unless we act! Any action, even a devious or hurtful one is better than doing nothing. If we do nothing, it will slip away, right? Well, consider for a moment that you are not the only one that knows you act desperate when you are afraid. They know. The use it to use you all the time! Their solution? Buy it, vote for it, work for it, worship it or kill for it. So, you do. And afterward you’re still no closer to your goal.

What’s our solution? First, realize there is no action necessary to attain that level of friendship, love, acceptance or fulfillment. Chances are, you already have it.

Quick story: A friend of ours wanted to be in a romantic relationship with a particular person. He was already friends with her. He wanted so badly to be with her, that he didn’t realize that he was already with her. He was so caught up in making her fall in love with him, that he forgot to do all the things that make women fall in love with me. Things like making her laugh, or politely complimenting her, or even just listening to her. These were all the things he imagined himself doing with her, but he didn’t realize that all he had to do was do them and enjoy them! He was too busy wallowing in fear of never having that special relationship to build that relationship. All he had to do was to continue doing the things that made them friends in the first place. Even if they had never become intimate, at least he would have enjoyed every aspect of her that he could have. But even more than that… There were probably fifteen girls at the time that did want to have a romantic relationship with him. No. He wouldn’t even give them a chance. It’s a shame, one of them might have been his future wife, but he was blinded by the fear of losing that particular girl.

The moral is that we are usually given what we need. When we aren’t, we find the strength to get what we can and survive without the rest. Every human being should be able to boil their desires down to one sentence. You’d be surprised how similar all our sentences would be if we did. Once we have a good handle on our desires, our fear will lessen. Without needless desires, there are no more needless worries. Eliminate needless desire. Write the one sentence that defines your needs and ignore the rest of the bullshit. You’ll find that what you really need is neither bought nor sold, neither legislated nor fought for nor worked for etc. Realizing this is the end to needless fear.

Picture fear as a lever. You are standing on the low end of a seesaw, and they are going to push down on the high end to launch you off. You can clutch at the ground or hand on to your end for dear life. Perhaps, you could just step off the seesaw. Once their lever is gone, they have no way of moving you. Once they no longer can move you, you will move yourself. That leap off is the first step. It’s the only step.

The two final fears to be conquered are the fear of death and the fear of the unknown. Those fears are quite different and are not within the scope of this article. Suffice to say that fearing death or the unknown prepares you for neither. Unknown things will happen, and we can prepare for them by training our minds and our bodies. Death is, as of yet, unavoidable. We prepare for death first by accepting our temporary nature, then by training our soul.

The culture of fear we live in can only be overcome by constant vigilance on our part. Whenever we feel anxious, we must first remember what it is we really need, and then slowly realize that our anxiety is not related to those true needs, but usually something insignificant. We must remind ourselves that ‘sweating the small stuff’ literally saps our energy to deal with true crises. Not only does our anxiety make us fell bad in the present, but it leave us under prepared and over tired in the future. Focus on your true needs. Write down that sentence again and again until you really get it. It is only when we conquer fear that the true part of our work in this life can begin.