“But there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate.”
SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 13.12b
Today’s quote in The Daily Stoic is about fear, and that’s a big topic for me. It’s something that I’ve pondered for years before starting this website, and something that I feel strongly about.
But first let’s look at what the book has to say. The author references the famous FDR quote about “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, and he highlights that the second part of the quote (which rarely gets included) is actually pretty important too:
“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
That second part drives home the point that uncontrolled and irrational fear effectively renders us helpless and hopeless, and it stops us from taking the actions necessary to turn the tide and win the battle.
And that’s a problem.
Let me state it again: Irrational fear is more dangerous than the actual thing we’re afraid of. The fear causes more problems than the object of our fear.
Fear causes us to make unsound, rushed choices. Panic leads to mistakes, with sometimes tragic results. The reaction is worse than the original misfortune, you could say.
Even if we don’t panic, and the fear manifests more subtly as constant worrying — that has the effect of robbing each present moment of its potential for joy. It causes us to miss the roses along the way. The world is sapped of color as we look at it, due to fear of something that might happen.
It’s kind of obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: for your own sake, and for the sake of people who love you, please don’t put a down payment on misery. Don’t get a head start on sadness. Don’t fret about things that might come to pass.
On the plus side
The flip side of this discussion about fear is what happens when you don’t let fear rule you.
Long before I started writing about stoicism, I was fascinated with the concept of fear and how it can derail us. In large part, I think, because there’s a heckuva lot of worrying and fear in my family, especially in my parents.
I’ve long held that the opposite of love (and by extension: possibility, potential, growth, joy) is not hate… it’s fear. Fear represents closing of doors, closing of minds, shutting down of opportunities, stagnation, sadness. And sometimes fear, fed by ignorance, can indeed lead to hate. Ultimately though, it’s love and fear which are polar opposites.
I’ve had a sticky note on my computer monitor for a long time that says “Live not from fear!” Not sure where that came from, maybe I made it up. But it represents the immense potential of a life lived from a position of love and joy, where fear isn’t part of the decision-making process.
There’s another sticky note on my monitor that says “Bliss is on the other side of fear”. It’s a quote from, of all people, actor Will Smith.
Finally, continuing with the theme of finding wisdom in unlikely sources, I do have one more sticky note on my monitor about fear. It says, “I see you Mara”, and it comes from Buddhism. The Buddha was regularly visited by a demon god named Mara, and he would acknowledge his presence when he arrived and even invite him in for tea, in the same way that you & I should recognize and acknowledge our fears boldly. I won’t try to re-tell the story here, but I do encourage you to read the blog post “Inviting Mara to Tea” for a profound story that has stayed with me for a long time after reading.
Live not from fear, stoic!
