THE DICHOTOMY OF FEAR

“It has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within….”

~ James Baldwin

Who can make us safe? What will make us safe?
Here is truth:
We will never be safe.

Only one cause of death exists, and that is birth.
To be alive is to know that one day we won’t be.

Safety is an illusion.
Only fear is real.
Here is truth:
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

We are not safe from Christians or Buddhists or Hindus or Jews or Muslims or Sikhs. (Well, maybe from the Buddhists.) We are not safe from atheists or devil worshippers or snake handlers or televangelists. Or false prophets.

We are not safe from the angry white person or the angry person of color. We are as at risk from the privileged as we are from the oppressed. We are not safe from terrorists or those who battle them. We are not safe from protestors or counter-protestors, pacifists or instigators, or from people who look the other way.

Teachers, preachers, rabbis, priests, imams, and gurus will not keep us safe, nor will astrologers, fortune tellers, or shamans. Not scientists, economists, writers nor artists. Neither will think tanks, nor blustery arguing heads, nor airwave pontificators, nor Wall Street Bankers. Corporations won’t, nor the mom-and-pop shop where the tire display was not securely fastened to the wall.

Can’t-we-all-just-get-along and a-pox-on-all-their houses won’t make us safe. Nor will our bubbles.

We won’t be made safe by the Constitution, laws, policy, politicians, presidents, prime ministers or all the king’s men (and women.)

Righteous folks and evil minds. Democrats and Republicans. Conservatives, liberals, progressives, moderates, feminists, Luddites, snowflakes, Black Lives Matter, antifa, neo-Nazi, do-gooder, hypocrite, hippie, preppers, lovers, haters, and the apathetic — we all are one in our vulnerability.

Police, spies, counterspies. All the generals and the admirals in the mighty military can’t make us safe. Nor troops on the ground, battleships on the seas, drones in the air. Satellites and nuclear arsenals will not keep us safe.

A wall will not save, nor will barbed-wire border crossings. Neither TSA pat downs nor airport X-rays. Not the defend-myself-arsenals, nor a pistol wedged under the mattress. Home security systems can’t keep us safe, nor armed guards, nor concrete barricades. The prisons are full, and still we are not safe.

Clearly the courts cannot make us safe.

The random bullet will find us, or the driver distracted by alcohol, texting, weariness, or rage. The mid-air engine failure. The unloosed boulder. A bee sting, a venomous snake that does what it was born to do. An avalanche, a hurricane, a tornado, an earthquake, the raging wildfire, and the rising seas. A submerged live wire, the slip of a scalpel, the stumble that connects concrete to cranium. One too many pills.

We are at risk from a sneeze on a crowded plane, the rogue cell in its malignant unfolding. A weakened heart, the burst blood vessel, a raging infection, the miscreant morsel of steak wedged in the windpipe. A mutant gene that decimates muscles, snatches breath, and denies dignity.

Should we survive accidents, natural disasters, wars, disease, our stupidity, and our own bleak thoughts, eventually, it will be time. No one can save us from time.

Science and facts! Reason and logic! Technology and great minds! Yes!
Yet they can’t make us safe.

Faith, God, Religion, and the rituals of an undefined Spiritual Path offer comfort, hope, and peace. Compassion, Kindness, and Love light the world.
But these cannot ensure safety.

Good deeds will not make us safe, nor kumbaya singing.

Our parents, our spouses, our friends, our lovers, and our children — people we would willingly die to defend — how they want to keep us safe! They will fight with everything they have to keep us safe.

It is impossible.

If love cannot keep us safe, how can fear?

Fear can serve, of course. But left unfettered, it enslaves. We are lost in darkness and despair.

Safety is illusion. We will never be safe.
Only by forgoing fear will freedom ring.