Facing Fear

Courage

“We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face...we must do that which we think we cannot.”

                                            Eleanor Roosevelt

All of us have secret fears. I was talking with a friend last night who had taken her seven year old grandson to the circus, thinking he would love the spectacle. But, less than an hour in, they turned off the lights, and he was so afraid that they had to leave. One of my sons hated the circus, too, because he was afraid of the clowns—still is. Fear, like every other emotion, is irrational. We don't know why people fear when they have had no bad experience to hark back to, but we are hard-wired to have fear. Spiders, for instance, are the bane of some people's existence. They would rather encounter a snake than a spider. You ask them, 'Have you ever been bitten by a spider?' and the answer is almost always 'no.' Fear is equal parts terror and revulsion.

Some of us grew up with fear because our families were not stable and protective. Fear and vigilance became a way of life. And sometimes fear is taught to us in subtle ways that we don't associate with actual experience. The Garden of Eden story in which Adam and Eve are duped by a snake and cast out of the garden, is a case in point. Children are taught this story as part of every Sunday school curriculum. In Genesis, the serpent is depicted only as “crafty” and is punished for beguiling the woman, but nowhere is it described as threatening, or frightening. Yet we think of the snake as the personification of evil, of Satan, and something to be greatly feared. Point of fact is that most snakes are harmless to humans; they are even useful critters to have around since they eat mice and other pests. Our fear is not rational.

Courage is not the lack of fear. Courage is facing one's fear and going ahead with life in spite of it. Courage is the lack of paranoia even though you know there are bad things, and bad people, in the world. Courage is refusing to be pessimistic in spite of all the negative media coverage. Courage is knowing that life is sometimes risky, and sometimes painful, and being determined to live it anyway. Courage is the refusal to let the ugly side of life overshadow all the good there is in the world. Courage is optimism in the face of loss. Just like fear, it isn't rational, but, thank God, most of us have it.

                                                   In the spirit,

                                                      Jane