Never Walked In High Heels

             It’s the mother lode of clichés. You hear the recording full of static as Roosevelt takes a deep breath. “The only thing we have to fear is…” dramatic pause. Yeah, I get it, I know what you’re going to say. Come on, come on, come on… “fear itself!” The punch line has been delivered, and we can all go back to dismissing the bromide all Americans have heard a thousand times before.

              I’m sure when FDR made that speech he wasn’t expecting it to be replayed until it had lost all meaning for future generations. I never really thought too much about it until this weekend, when I found myself coming from a small town paralyzed by fear and then it took on a whole new meaning. What I always assumed it to mean was that people had nothing to fear and that there was this feeling out there called fear which was only for fools to react.

              And then this weekend I spent time with people who lived in stagnant fear. Not terror mind you, but plain, simple, fear. The difference is striking. People all over the world live in justifiable terror where there is unspeakable violence, horrible threats, and a justifiable unknown of what tomorrow may bring. According to the Oxford American dictionary, fear is classified as “a belief” which, by definition may or may not be based in fact. Conversely, terror is “a state” caused by something directly. Terror, it seems, is concrete and is caused by dangers whereas fear, is not. The people that I am speaking of live in fear, although of exactly what I do not know.

              I know they are living in fear because fear is paralyzing. This is what I have failed to notice about Roosevelt’s statement until now, the reason we must be afraid of fear is because this emotion, above all others, stops us dead in our tracks. By definition, you cannot run from a belief because there is no way to tell what direction leads towards safety. Fear lurks around every corner because it manifests itself in your mind. Thus, your entire world begins to shrink down to where the shadows don’t reach. But any wall brings its own manufactured shadow.

              I could give you the specifics of the fearful nature of the people I spent my weekend with, but in truth it seems like they’re mere generalities describing the fearful times we live in today. One woman was afraid the world was ending, another that her money would soon be worthless so she refused to spend any of it. There was a farmer afraid of fixing his tractor because of what his co-operative would think of his budget, and a kid refusing to go to school because he may fail out. These are the nebulous fears which follow us all and a person from a different demographic may even call them worries. But they each, in one form or another, stop life.

              Perhaps it took another economically tough time for me to understand what fear actually is. I would hear that there was only one thing to fear and wonder what anyone could feel staring down the barrel of a gun which Roosevelt would deem an appropriate response. But as a man with polio, I’m guessing he knew fear and he knew terror. He knew the terror of a body slowly destroying itself across the hours, and the fears of having to figure out how to live life all over again. No doubt he saw that each was very different. And while terror causes you to embrace life as you’ve never gone after it before, fear can only lead to shunning it altogether. And while there are plenty of dark forces out there, the most frightening is the one in which you willingly surrender life.