on fear

a post about fear from a fellow blogger and witchy-friend got me thinking, especially when i consider it's october, the month when popular culture is increasingly allowing all the things that go bump in the night out of the closet.

when you start to notice how many times we are told we should be afraid of things, it's really no wonder that most of us live our lives in a constant state of low-level fear. just a trip to the grocery store, or goddess forbid, a gas station, can stir up terrible thoughts from global warming to genetic modification. when i was married to my first husband, i lived in a constant state of fear because he could be emotionally and physically abusive.

when i left him, i promised myself i would never again live in fear, or make decisions based on fear, or allow fear of anything to rule my life. but even after i'd moved to ct, and we were divorced, he still had the power to terrify me with legal threats about custody and child support. one night, i was upset because i'd been served with yet more court papers. i remember crying and carrying on, and just being so terrified i felt as if i couldn't go on.

and then Beloved pointed out, that as bad as things MIGHT get, there were no nazis at the door. and that everything i was afraid of had not come to be, might never come to be, and i was wasting a lot of time and energy worrying about things that weren't real. i can't say his words immediately changed my outlook, but it marked a turning point for me.

and once the situation with my ex began to calm down, and i was able to apply my outlook to the broader world around me, i was astonished to realize just how much we are manipulated and controlled.... by fear.

the pitch is intensified now, it seems, over the election. time and again i hear from my dear Syster-Wymen how afraid they are ... if mccain gets elected, if the supreme court overturns roe v wade... if we go to war with iran... if if if... the litany of fear runs over and over, a moebius loop of such astonishing proportions it seems we must all be snared in its web, except, of course, for the lucky few - like the buddhist monks and nuns in their monasteries, the ones who've renounced it all.

a few weeks ago, i received a letter from a very kind-hearted and well-meaning individual - a reader of this blog, in fact - who means to save my soul by threatening me with potential hellfire and damnation if i don't bow my head to God the Judge.

this poor soul can't see how she is bound in a hell made of fear, a hell she sincerely wishes in which i should join.

i haven't answered her latest epistle yet, mostly because i haven't quite decided HOW to answer her. it isn't that i simply don't believe her kind of hell exists. it's that i can't participate in her kind of fear. and that's the attitude i'm striving to adopt - in these most tumultous of times.

so what if the worst happens? what if mccain-palin get elected? what if the financial markets collapse? what if roe vs wade gets overturned? what if we blow ourselves up, or worse, poison our world with chemicals and greed, so we all go down in a slimey green sludge?

well, maybe if roe vs wade gets overturned, we will be roused out of our complacencey and finally and forever create a law that "gives" women absolute right to decide what they do to their bodies. the fact we even NEED to articulate this "right" is - or should be - an abomination.

not long ago, i came to the conclusion that anyone who thinks the end of humanity is a bad thing isn't seeing it from the cockroach's point of view. energy is never lost and matter regenerates. a trillion years from now we may all be arguing over the viablity of belief in sentient humanity, even as we chow down on their mountains of rubbish. after all, haven't there been times you wanted an extra pair of hands?

and furthermore the war must end. blessed be.