I SHALL FEAR NO EVIL
Some fear is essential, simply for self-protection, for those we love and for our larger community. But often, there is a hidden fear that motivates individuals, groups or even nations to hurt themselves. Fear and anger both come in the same package, though we may not see it that way. And fear-based responses to life are unlikely to be creative. Change and growth is the other pathway in life. That pathway requires a deliberate critical thought process.
Fear prevents us from participating in life to its fullest. It stagnates! It compels us to unconsciously erect barriers that can keep others at a “safe” distance from us. It may be because of some early emotional injury or conflict that we have learned to keep a “safe” distance as a protection from further harm. And we don’t know why we feel alone or sometimes disconnected. When we perceive an injury, it confirms for us our continued distancing, even though it contributes to our melancholy. We often needlessly retaliate to protect ourselves.
The fear of death, I believe, underlies all our other fears and that is what prompts us to erect our excessive responses. We accumulate wealth and power to temporarily make us feel more secure and self- confident, but if they become the primary goals in one’s life, then when the time for parting comes, as eventually it will, the loss will accentuate the sense of aloneness.
Recently, the public’s ire has been focused on the extremes of greed, the accumulation of wealth by some of the top executives of corporations who contributed to the economic melt-down. The anger directed against such individuals may well be justified. What could it be other than a fear of death that motivated the greed to frantically compensate, by employing the Midas touch? But closer to home, has there not been a societal excess of materialism in the last few years? What of the extravagant sizes and prices for houses that have been on the market, so many of which are now empty? Is that too, not a symbol of the materialism of this age? The deep insecurity that we all deal with now, as the economy spirals downward, should be an eloquent reminder of what we always knew, but preferred to ignore—that we may have been motivated by a fear, that too soon, we might be missing too much of the good life before we die.
Our many years of experience of volunteering in hospice and palliative care has given us a glimpse of what matters most when we take the long look back at life. We learn to accept the mysteries of birth, of life and death, of the drama of life’s story and think about what it all means. When we think of the many dear souls with whom we have spent time and to whom we gave emotional and spiritual support, as they approached the end of their journey here, fame or fortune had no real significance. Nothing mattered more at that time than how truly they had loved and were loved.
I am now well into my ninth decade and for some years, I confess that I have watched, with some misgivings, as today’s culture seemed motivated by too much pressure to have everything. Now, perhaps we may take stock of what may have been driving us. Perhaps we can slow down and learn how to do with less. When one’s values are primarily wealth or power and they disappear, then little is left. Fear causes us to respond to life in the same way over and over. Fear causes us to shun involvement for fear of injury. The result is loneliness and depression and isolation. Can we instead think more in terms of being our brother’s keeper?
I was brought up in a religion that taught us to fear the outside world. It was “sinful,”-- to be shunned,-- lest we should be tempted or seduced. And we had a real fear of “hell”. One does not change easily from such a subjective frame of reference. Painful experiences may even be necessary to just start the questioning process. After many years, I began to understand that it was my own ingrained isolation and fear of the real world that needed to change and my outlook began to change. Sometimes I had to be deliberate in my recognition of my fear and learn to respond with courage and abandon.
We may never totally erase all our fears, but the path of service, the easing of another’s burden, is the most effective and probably the only way to ease one’s own burden of fear, as much as is humanly possible. It is a gift we can bestow on ourselves! As we become free of fear, we gain the ability to listen intently, free of the distraction of self-interest. Such a gift is a great reward in itself and it enables one to make contact with another in such a positive way that it may be uniquely indelible. Perhaps the reader has touched another in that special way at some point in time? Think about those interactions!
No one states it more clearly than Rachel Naomi Remen in her book, GRANDFATHERS BLESSING, “Service is the final healing of isolation and loneliness. It is the lived experience of belonging, of connecting to others in the world around us.” Between my wife, June, and I, we have had many years of hands-on service and that has made all the difference. Those whom we served were the mentally handicapped, the outcast and destitute, and those approaching the end of life. There is no reward equal to doing something for another one in need. As Mother Theresa said, “We cannot all do great things, but we all can do small things with great love,”
We all should be able to accept our own mortality and be able to be candid, without being morbid. The freedom from fear endows one with the ability to listen intently, completely free of all self-interest. Service will heal the sense of isolation and enable one to connect with life itself. Service can be a greater gift than we know. It can liberate and transform the lives of others and our own.
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