“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Age and experience have taught me that fear is ever-present. You never conquer it. It changes with time, but it never goes away. Fear is a constant in all of our lives.
Bravery ebbs and flows. The ironic thing about bravery is that without fear, there is no bravery. So if you’d like to be brave, you have to acknowledge and recognize fear.
Fears don’t care what you do. Be brave. Be cowardly. Fears don’t care either way.
“Don’t let your fears win.”
Most of us have heard that admonition. But here’s the thing. Fears aren’t motivated to win or lose. Fears have no expectation because fears are mostly irrational. Well, the ones that really stymie us seem that way.
“Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”
— Aristotle
Maybe I should more precisely define fear, at least as I’m using it for today’s show. I very much like the acronym – false evidence appearing real. That makes my usage of the word different than those real challenges you face. For instance, an annual medical checkup can reveal some serious health concerns. Your doctor sits down with you and lays out a course of treatment. Yes, you’re afraid, but your fear is based on real evidence of something that is very real. Your fear of the unknown is understandable. It takes the human mind some time to adapt and adjust to this news. That’s why your knees buckle at the news, but within days you’re back on your feet with greater resolve to battle through and do whatever you’re able to improve your condition. But that doesn’t happen immediately. The processing of this news takes time. Real fear. Real issues. Nothing fake or false happening here.
Maybe it’s splitting hairs, but I hope you get the difference.
And I hope you’re not having to endure something of that sort, but I suspect some of you are. You’re battling through some bad news. Some very real bad news that you simply must face as best you can. Some bad news that requires you to simply do your best in whatever decisions lay ahead.
“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
I don’t believe life is merely filled with imaginary monsters or boogeymen. There are some real ones.
I also believe terror is real and fueled by our panic and fear. For instance, the coronavirus is very real. It’s not imaginary, but the panic and fear partly are. As I record this there are about 84,000 cases worldwide. There are almost 2,900 deaths. Almost 37,000 have recovered. There are 60 cases reported in the US. But I have a buddy who was scheduled to travel from Dallas to Nashville to a conference. The conference was canceled due to fears of the spreading virus. I know a seminar company that has already capitalized on the fear by selling hi-end seminars to organizations panicked about what they might do if the virus strikes. The fear and the virus are both real. The level of fear is amplified though because we imagine this thing is far worse in scope and scale. In our minds, it’s like this worldwide plague spreading faster than we can even identify it. That’s not true.
What is true, we have questions about this thing. There are many things we don’t know. Those unknowns make us more afraid than we might otherwise be. It’s how fear works. The less we know the greater our fear.
Just look at the stock market’s reaction to the coronavirus. The stock market is proof that fear works.
Almost 3,300 people die every day worldwide in traffic accidents. It eclipses 1.25 million people.