It's everywhere, surrounding us like a damp slightly putrid brown-grey fog and it creeps in everywhere through door cracks and windows and it even slides its clammy little fingers under our clothes and into our beds and into our dreams. Creeped out yet? London fog, perhaps? Does this sound like a Halloween spook? Really, what I'm writing about today, Gentle Reader, is Fear. Fear of poverty, fear of global warming and climate change, fear of child molesters, fear of Chinese millionaires, fear of homelessness, fear of loneliness, fear of Donald Trump. Fear of fear.
Never have we lived in such a dense, intense and fetid climate of fear, and never has there been less cause for being afraid. When you read the statistics you will see that locally crime is down, lower than it's been in four decades. War is down. There have never been so few nations in conflict with each other. We are living longer than ever before. Despite growing income inequality we are still generally better off than our parents' generation. We have a plethora of good, delicious and bountiful food to enjoy from all parts of the world. Even though people, afraid of food scarcity and a breakdown of the global food system, are trying to grow and consume what is locally grown, or locavores.
Everybody, it seems, is afraid of everyone and everything. Men are afraid of women, women are afraid of men, the Republicans fear Hilary and the Democrats fear Julian Assange. Here in civilized Canada the Liberals fear the Conservatives, the NDP fear the Liberals and the Conservatives fear everyone and everything.
Trapped in our cars we fear the other drivers. Trapped on the bus, we feel the almost creepy closeness of the stranger seated beside us and our first reaction is fear. Even after the Cold War, and following the threat of global nuclear annihilation we all live in a state of fear. Even if things are actually better now. Or maybe not quite so bad as when I was young, shortly after the discovery of fire. When we actually had more to be afraid of. And we simply were not afraid. I grew up unafraid. I was a child when I began talking to strangers. When I was fourteen I started hitch-hiking, which I continued to do for another seven years. It was an awesome way of meeting new people and learning more about life. It never occurred to me to be afraid. Not even when I was threatened with sexual assault by some drivers and not even when an angry young aboriginal hit me after I said hi to him on the sidewalk, not even when at thirty-five on my first night in Amsterdam I was robbed at knifepoint.
I could not fall back into fear, and only when I finally let that happen a few years later, just too overwhelmed with trauma to be able to resist, did my mental health really begin to suffer. My recovery really began as soon as I began to take risks again, making new friends, talking to people, going places, getting on airplanes and seeing other countries, learning a new language to communicate better with my Spanish-speaking friends.
There are many possible causes to this epidemic of fear. I think the worst is our interconnectedness through internet technologies as well as our own spiritual emptiness. We see, hear and know too much now, too soon and too quickly about things that are going on all over the world and we are not biologically equipped to process the information. This causes us to shut down and it overwhelms us and we become afraid and it paralyses us.
We need to take a breather from everything, disconnect from social media, go outside, walk in the pure air, surround ourselves with trees if we can and simply slow down and when we see someone walking by to try to get a sense of that person. Here is an idea. Try to think of what that person must have been like as a baby. Hold that thought. And when they come close enough to see your eyes, smile and say hi.
I am dedicating this post to my friend from Peru who encouraged me so eloquently recently to not be afraid should Donald Trump be elected president.
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