Fear (Part I)
Originally posted on Facebook on July 26, 2016
I keep thinking about how fear becomes anger and anger turns to hatred.
It starts when you are afraid of someone who looks different from you or thinks differently than you. Maybe you are afraid they will take something of yours, something you need. Maybe they have nothing, and you have something, even if it’s next to nothing. Maybe you are both desperate. Maybe you have enough for now, but you don’t think there’s enough to go around.
Maybe you think they have a gun, or a knife or a bomb. Maybe they do, and maybe they are afraid of you too. Maybe they do want to hurt you, or kill you, or everyone like you. Maybe they are just afraid that you want to hurt them, or kill them, or kill everyone like them. Maybe you look at them in fear, and they look at you in fear, and fear turns to anger, and anger turns to violence, and violence turns to hate.
What if every time you were afraid you chose curiosity? What if every time you were afraid you chose kindness? What if every time you were afraid you chose vulnerability? What if you met fear with open arms? What if you never forgot that we are all human? And that we are all scared?
We will never stop being afraid of the unknown, the different, the desperate, the angry, the hateful. We will never stop being afraid of each other. But we have to remind ourselves and each other that fear is a terrible, dehumanizing lens, and we don’t see clearly through it. Fear alters our perceptions and makes us perceive someone as threatening even if they are not. Fear magnifies our differences and diminishes our common humanity.
We have to try to set aside our fears and see each other as we truly are.
We can have courage. We can be afraid and still choose to deescalate. We can lay down arms and agree to an uneasy peace. We can find common ground, even when we are scared. We can challenge ourselves to do it in small ways. Instead of hiding, try to connect instead. If you can, make eye contact with, smile at, talk to the people you are irrationally afraid of and who are irrationally afraid of you. Watch them smile in relief.
We can be scared and still be brave. And we can challenge people and authorities and institutions who are acting out of ignorance, fear, anger and hate. We can ask friends and neighbors and relatives to rise above their fears and prejudices. We can acknowledge each other’s pain when there are wounds from our past too deep to heal — from colonization, genocide, slavery, mass incarceration, systemic oppression, and other atrocities we are afraid to look at. We can tell the police to stop shooting first and asking questions later when they are scared of the color of a person’s skin. We can tell the TSA to stop profiling people and harassing them when they are scared of their religion. We can tell the government to stop dropping bombs on terrified people who live in countries full of “terrorists.” We can ask to open our borders to the desperate, scared people fleeing the angriest, most hateful people in the world.
The ones who are scared have every reason to be scared. The ones who are angry have every right to be angry. But we have to speak up. But we have to do something. We have to choose a different path.
We can do better. We can imagine what it’s like for each other. We can help each other. We can try, in our imperfect, human ways, to love and be kind to one another.
