Fear and the Fear of Fear

There I said it all in the title. OK, its out there and lying like a cold dead fish on the counter top, waiting on us to chop it up, roll it around in our own special ideas of how to prepare and serve it. Some love it, others hate it and I think maybe the majority of us spend our lives trying to cope with it. Fear.

I will be the first to admit I am a collection of shivering, wide eyed awake in the middle of the night because I can't sleep fear. I fear the unknown, I fear the expected, I fear Y2K really happened and a huge Government cover-up is hiding the fact that we are now totally back in the stone age. I fear the death, harm, sickness, and possible future of my children. I fear loud thunderstorms, weak bladders, spiders, mean people, and Bigfoot.

I know that the majority of people that ride in cars (which is the majority of the majority of us all) will at some point in their lives be harmed in a major car crash, and that scares the crap out of me every time I pull out of my driveway! Statistically I know I am almost guaranteed to possibly die or be dismembered in a car wreck. And THAT fear doesn't even compare to the gut gnawing sick fear I feel every time my children leave in a car, and I don't care who is driving!

Yeah I gotta lot of fears. I fear poverty, health care, lack of health care and the Dentist. I fear I am not working enough, not getting enough done, not creating the security necessary to care for my family and for the time that will be here all too soon when I need more extensive health care.

But none of those fears even compare to my fear of Facebook.

Yeah that Social Networking thing scares the crap out of me because the walls I established between the real me and the Internet me is slowly getting torn down. So now the friends I gleefully spent years with in AOL Chat rooms where I encouraged Lesbian threesomes, are now making comments on the same page my pastor might visit on a regular basis. My kids go to my page as well as my co-workers, and all of the extended families of my co-workers. The Mayor of my hometown is a fellow graduating classmate of mine, and a Facebook friend.

"Not a big deal," you say? "Relax, Nobody cares about that stuff," you think? OK! OK! OK! Let me give you another example.

A few months ago I would have rushed to the computer to tell you of the verbal exchange between my wife and I. You know, one of those things where I am suggesting we have a bit of "Mom and Dad" time. So innuendo leads to suggestion leads to playful touching that leads to "the look."

Only now I am told, "That's not going to happen, for some reason my bottom hurts."

And while I fearlessly looked her straight in the eye with one arched eyebrow and suavely asked, "...you think it hurts now...?" followed by a bit of wagging of those arched eyebrows.

OK I am terrified to post that in a blog entry! Did I mention my wife and her friends read this thing? My mother reads this! My kids read this! And there is no way in the WORLD you can have a good entertaining blog if you allow yourself to be controlled by fear. Fear of castration with a dulled butter knife from the kitchen drawer... while sleeping.... in a house in the country... where nobody can hear me scream... that would report it... because they read the Blog too.... and they were probably the ones that suggested it.

FEAR!

The Day After

So here we are, a world where the armies of good finally defeated the armies of evil after many years of watching the world get plunged into darkness. And how did the side of light over come the evil clutches of darkness..? With a BLACK MAN!

Now while the new generation is dancing in celebration of the election of the first African American President we have a large percentage of the country plunged into fear. Elderly whites, those who never attended a desegregated school, who grew up hearing tales of of the threat of outright racial warfare are in complete terror. The worst nightmare they have been trained from birth to fear is now manifested in the shape of a well educated, highly qualified man with a plan who just happens to be a bit darker than the 43 Presidents to hold office before him.

Now do not get me wrong. I am not saying we should hold a big pity party for the old established bigots of the nation. I am not saying we should clasp the cold and shaking liver spotted hands in our warm grip of hope and say with a smiling face, "Oh, you're a racist? Isn't that sweet!" NO! I am saying we need to acknowledge that reasonable or unreasonable as it may seem a century and a half after the fall of slavery, a half a century after the civil rights acts, more than 10 years after Doug Williams won the Super Bowl... as preposterous as it might strike us... We have 10s of millions of people that are gripped in absolute fear.

I don't know the answer, but I will bet there is not a reader that comes to this blog that doesn't have at least one family member who feels this way. It is not Republican dogma that controls this fear, it is not concern about taxes. It is a fear of race or skin color. It is still fed by the evening news and nurtured by a lack of direct contact with a real community.

Fueled by tales of Social Service workers and Medical Administrators who only deal with the poorest of the poor. They spread skewed stories of a incomplete demographic as if it were indisputable fact. The gang bangers are in the Whitehouse!

Please be patient. As time passes and the nation sees the leader that emerges, try not to gloat. They grew up in different times with different beliefs. Change is hard. We need to show a little understanding but we also need to continue the movement and shine light on the fears. If we don't stand up and expose the good that will start happening the fear will grow and fester. But we can help. Yes we can.