“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Isn’t that what President Roosevelt once told a worried nation? It wasn’t true in the strictest sense but the implication was clear enough. Fear is paralyzing and if you let it, it can rule and ultimately ruin your life as surely as whatever it is you are so deeply worried about or afraid of. I got to thinking about fear again after my husband sent me a link to a column by SF Gate’s Mark Morford. He is so left of center you would need to use GoogleEarth to pinpoint his exact location, and his ability to string a tongue contorting sentence together via adjectives and comparative phrases can sometimes overwhelm the thought train, but he usually makes a point somewhere in the verbiage. A point that is often barbed and an equal opportunity contempt-er. The column was entitled Welcome home, have some gunfire/Nothing like returning from vacation to the dulcet sounds of hardcore street violence, no? It was about urban violence and the way it effects and affects us. And it was about fear and the fearful way we live in this new brave new world of the 21st century. Although I don’t believe that we as a people are more violent, or are even more prone to violence, now than at any time in the past, I do believe that those of us who make up the washed masses are for the first time in a long while less shielded from it. You would think a liberal like Morford would see this as a good thing. A leveler whose time had come. I think, like most people who find themselves more or less face to face with danger and the in your face reality that characterizes the lives of so many more people than we of the “cleanliness” class wish to acknowledge, that it is too breath-taking, and not in a good way, for us to wrap thought processes around. Here is an excerpt:

 

To me, such harsh events merely serve to highlight the simple, but

incredibly potent choice: Would you like to move through your life in

ever-diminishing circles of trepidation? Would you like to live in a vague

sort of dread of what might lie around the next corner or behind the next

door or at the next stoplight? Because baby, you certainly can.

  It can affect every aspect of life. Would you like to be perpetually

worried about, say, getting into a debilitating accident every time you

start your car? Would you like to live in constant low-level fear of

robbery, of lightning storms, Internet scams and lead paint and a big

black Escalade slamming into your Accord at 90 mph? How about getting shot

at the liquor store or getting assaulted while jogging or accidentally

tripping on your shoelaces as you walk by a giant picture window and

crashing screamingly through the glass and tumbling 50 floors to your very

graphic and bloody and cinematic death? Hey, all you have to do is tune

into it, and it’s yours.

  And here’s the great divine kicker: The more you worry about it, the more

you abide in fear and anxiety, the more likely such trauma and drama will

happen to you. It’s the Great Inverse Law of Energy: What you fear most

will be drawn to you like a magnet. And the universe goes: Ha.

 

I don’t believe in the law of catastrophic attraction. I don’t believe in the laws of attraction period. The idea that you can think your way to any particular state of being is popular with the kinds of people who would rather not have to work for anything. Like my five year old, they believe in magic wands and sitting on their hands waiting for the timer to ding and release them from their situations like school children at day’s end. It also sits well with those who need excuses and places to lay blame to make it through their lives free from the inconvenience of personal responsibility and self-fulling expectations. 

 

Bad things don’t happen to you because you worry that they might. The Twin Towers didn’t fall as a result of someone worrying that they would. People don’t have heart attacks, get hit by automobiles or die from any number of diseases because they thought or over-thought the possibility. We are finite and frail, and we have constructed a world that can be hazardous to us, although the world before we began renovating it wasn’t overly user friendly either. Those of us who are cognizant of that spend time thinking about it now and then, and those of us who have experienced some of the very worst life has to throw at us range somewhere from yellow to orange on the alert scale thereafter. But whether our actions put us in harms way or not is simply the randomness we call reality, no one worries themselves to the point of attracting the negative attention of the universe because the universe already knows what is going to happen based on the law of probability that generally bears it out.

 

Morford does make one good point.

 

Because truth is, you are never far from the suffering and the hell. You

are never, ever completely immune, even on your most delightful and mellow

post-vacation days. The wolf is always — and I do mean always — at the

door. It is merely a question of whether or not you wish to simply see him

and smell him and give him a moment of respect before moving on, or

actually stop, and give in, and offer him the meat from your tired and

world-wary bones.

 

When lightning strikes the first question asked is “why me?” The answer is why not you? No one is special to the point of avoiding pain, suffering, despair, loneliness and grief. We are all vulnerable. The phrase “There, but for the grace of God, go I” exists for just that reason. It is “grace” from some unknown source that spares some of us from some tragedies, but it won’t protect all of us all of the time. And it’s not a bad thing to be aware of it. Giving some thought to the “what ifs” can help prepare a person for when disaster strikes; however, it can also serves as a reminder to live each day mindfully, if not always with full gratitude, because you never do know and regrets can leave life-long scars that can do far more damage than worrying about the possibility of acquiring them ever would.

 

I guess the Boy Scouts were on to something with their “Be prepared!” motto. I would add to that just one word. Live. Be prepared to live. Worry within reason. Expect to be your own salvation when tragedy strikes and be grateful if you don’t have to be. And live. Just live. In the moment and for the future with only occasionally glances back to keep your bearing.