Freedom From Fear

It’s a story as common as standing up to a bully on the playground or news breaking stories about the toppling of a powerful, entrenched dictator in the Middle East. When individuals or groups are no longer afraid or are simply tired of being afraid and are willing to roll the dice, they can truly break free and begin to live as liberated human beings.

The example of the protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, and now Libya is a dramatic case of facing fear under fire. But, fear stalks us all, and can make cowards of us all, if we let it, and every day we hear about or know examples in daily life of courageous individuals throwing off the shackles of fear and reclaiming their lives. It might be a woman who leaves her husband after putting up for years with his abusive behavior. It could be the simple case of employees finally calling the bluff of a tyrannical boss. Or a young man starting out his career crippled with the fear of public speaking finally getting help to overcome that fear. Or a person with an incurable disease living life to the full right up to the end.

Over the past couple of decades, command and control, based on fear, is losing its grip as a preferred management style as well, as younger people coming into the work force no longer want to work for such organizations. Even my own Catholic Church is slowing learning the limitations of fear as a management principle, as more and more Catholics no longer are responding to a message based chiefly on hierarchical command and control. Growing up in the 40’s and 50’s, guilt and fear were out constant companions. That appeal no longer works, as the huge number of former Catholics leaving Church sadly bears witness.

Michel Montaigne, 16th century French essayist, says in an essay titled “Of Fear,” that it is a passion “which carries our judgment away sooner from its proper seat” than any other and “it exceeds all disorders in intensity.” He also said, reminiscent of FDR’s 1933 inaugural address almost four centuries later, “The thing I fear most is fear.” According to Sarah Bakewell’s new biography (How to Live: A Life of Montaigne), Montaigne had a morbid fear of death that obsessed him up through his 30’s. Fortunately, “the constriction did not last,” she writes. “By his forties and fifties, Montaigne was liberated into light-heartedness.” And, it was during that period, when he really started to live, that he wrote most of his wonderful essays that still speak to us compelling today.

Death, of course, is the big moose under the table and as one gets older and sees relatives and friends dying, it’s hard to ignore death. But, it also becomes more real and with that comes the realization that always fearing death is no way to live, as Montaigne ultimately concluded. After all, none of us is going to get out of this life alive. We’re all going to die, so why keep practicing for it!

In a wonderful poem, “When Death Comes,” Mary Oliver said it best when she wrote:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
If I made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing, and frightened
Or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.


Gerald E. Lavey