Courage and Fear, and a Mundane Lesson

 I had a lesson in my everyday life recently that reminded me how to step around fear.



I had been holding onto a letter for a long time. It had arrived in my mailbox after a few interchanges by mail where I revealed some personal details, and then worried that I had revealed too much or pushed the other person too much. So when this letter came in the mail, I had set it aside. I was going to read and respond to it.

And this continued. For a year. And another. And another. And more. Finally, a few weeks ago, after 9 years had gone by, I finally opened the letter. Was there any angry, judgmental, or pushy message? No. It was a Christmas card, and a general Christmas letter. I laughed at myself, to have let this hang over me for so long.

This is a mundane story, but I think it has a few broader lessons.

First, I let this hang over me, partly out of business, and partly out of fear, for one reason or another. I kept on pushing it aside, but never tossing it out, so it was always there, hiding in the periphery of my consciousness. In some ways, it's a lucky experience to have such a petty fear to worry about. Many people fear much worse. But it was still something that I allowed to hold power over me. And in the end, I couldn't avoid it. It was something I needed to address.

What I found when I did address it, that provides a second lesson. Namely, things are usually not as bad as I fear. I first learned this lesson when 9/11 happened. My mind invented a lot of fears. But I stayed conscious of them. In the end, what came to pass was a lot less bad than what I imagined. It was a lesson for me that I can imagine much worse than what turns out to be reality. This letter I had for 9 years, that is another such lesson. More often than not, these fears are paper tigers.

But fear is real. Fear is a survival instinct; fear can drive behavior that keeps us alive. The important thing is to acknowledge the fear. Because when you do that, you can start to take away its power over you. You become a conscious actor. When you acknowledge your fear, you can choose to retreat from it, or to step around it. You can recognize when others (especially politicians) are playing on your fears, and you can say "No!"

To be conscious of fear, for me this idea is another lesson. Namely, that courage does not have to mean the elimination of fear. Instead, courage can take the form of determination to act, while in acknowledgement of fear.

As you live your life, live it with courage. When you find yourself fearful, try to list your fears, and write them down. Think through them. And then use your courage to keep on going. Because you've got too much to do. Your life is too important to let yourself be controlled by random fears. You don't have to eliminate them (although it is nice to do so) but you don't need to let them control you either.