FEAR

There have been times in my life when I have been afraid.  Not thunder and lightning afraid or ‘Boo! You jumped’ afraid but fear so raw that it made me hyperventilate. It was fear so intense that my basest survival instincts kicked in.

I think that those are the moments in every person’s life when you get the gift of clarity.  You get an answer to the question of how you will react or behave when your life is truly and unequivocally in danger.

It isn’t important what the situations are, it’s how we respond.  

I once had a conversation with a bouncer from a bar who was not a stereotypical bouncer He was smaller and not very imposing and yet he had one of the best records for safety and diffusing ‘iffy’ situations  He would go up to the drunk with a knife or a broken bottle and calmly put his arm around him and explain how he wasn’t concerned about the drunk using the knife because he knew the drunk was a great guy, but he was concerned for who might want to challenge the drunk to a fight and as a favor to him would the dunk let him put the knife out of the reach of the jerks who might not be a great.   He diffused the situation and he did it without violence and he had an almost 100% success rate.  He did it with no body armor, no gun and no deaths.

His theory was that tonight he was the bouncer and someone else was drunk but tomorrow he might be the drunk and someone else the bouncer.  In his words, ‘We're all really just human'.

In those moments when real fear kicked in, I was lucky enough to be scared not only for myself but for others nearby.  There are situations that having been in them and been fearful, I will spend my life trying not to be in them again. And there are situation for which I will volunteer because I trust my response more than others

It is how we react to fear that distinguishes us.  

Do we turn internally from our fear, close ourselves off from anything that has potential to scare us?

Do we strive to understand the fear; the what and the why and also the cause? To try to understand the thing that frightens us and possibly lessen the fear?

Do we denigrate the fear itself as well as the cause believing that if the cause has no value then the fear will subside?

Do we inflate the cause and demonize it to mythical dimensions thereby justifying our fear?  ‘See how scary the other is? No wonder we are scared.’

Perhaps we should embrace the fear; acknowledge it and accept that I am afraid. It is a flaw in me, not in you.

I don’t care how scared you are or how demonic the person coming at you seems, there is no reason to shoot one unarmed person six times.