Fear

March 15th, 2025

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” – the Litany Against Fear from Dune by Frank Herbert

I am afraid. I worry about many things. As the legal guardian for our four-year-old grandson, Asher, I fear that he might lose his government health insurance if Congress and President Trump gut Medicaid. I wonder what is going to happen to Social Security and Medicare. My wife and I depend on both of those programs. The state of the economy frightens me as tariffs and other forces introduce chaos into the system. I won’t even start talking about foreign affairs. This essay would be far too long if I did.

I am certain that I am not the only American who is anxious about the present situation, much less the future. If the polls are at all accurate, then millions of other people in our country share my concerns. Many of them live in far more desperate conditions than I do. There may be changes coming that qualify as existential threats for a lot of folks.

So, what do we do?

The Serenity Prayer states:

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.”

There is wisdom in that prayer regardless of whether a person believes in God or not. There are some things in life that I cannot change, and I just have to roll with them. There are other things, in my personal life or in my community, that are possible for me to influence. Fear is not inherently bad. The point is not to let fear paralyze me. That is why Frank Herbert describes fear as “the mind-killer”. Fear is a universal emotion and a necessary warning to humans that there is danger. There is a choice in what I do with this emotion.

I know a brave young man who climbs up on tall buildings nearly every day to weld structural steel. People tell me that he is fearless. That is incorrect. He is often frightened, and that is as it should be, because the danger he faces is real. However, he allows the fear to pass over him and through him, as it says in the Litany. His fear forces him to be careful in his work. He exercises caution, but he still gets the job done. He completes the mission.

We are surrounded by voices telling us to be afraid. Social media encourages that. The fact is that fear sells. Politicians know that, and the worst of them manipulate us through our anxieties. It is exceedingly rare for someone in politics to inspire confidence in us. Most of them prefer to be predators.

Am I saying that everything will be okay? I tell Asher that, but I am not saying it in this article. We face dangers that are real. Some bad things can happen and will happen.

So, once again, what do we do?

We need to trust in ourselves. We need to trust others. That means we have to take risks. We may not be required to climb up 44 stories to work on a new high rise, but we need to listen to our fears and then act upon them.