What The Pandemic Teaches Us About Overcoming Fear
I inhaled anxiety at an early age. My mother’s fear kept her from ever going to a dentist. My sister has never flown on a plane. One of my aunts was afraid to ride on buses. I vowed this would not be my life. Often I merely covered my fears by feigning bravado, behaving in a manner a male friend once jokingly described as “female macho.”
When COVID-19 hit, my dread kicked into high gear. Last year at this time, with thousands succumbing to the virus daily, I feared my husband and I wouldn’t live to see another spring. Never had the words of St. Benedict seemed so penetrating, “Day by day, remind yourself you are going to die. Hour by hour keep careful watch over all you.”
As usual, reality didn’t match the worst case scenario my mind had conjured.
Not only did I survive the year (something for which I give thanks each day), there were many unexpected blessings. I grew closer than ever to my husband. With fewer distractions, I was able to finish a new book. I started writing poetry again. When all of my public presentations were cancelled because of the pandemic, I was able to connect with far more people by offering online retreats than I would have ever reached in person.
Fear is its own kind of pandemic. “One of the persistent hounds of hell,” is how theologian Howard Thurman referred to it.
“Our homes, institutions, prisons, churches are crowded with people who are hounded by day and harrowed by night because of some fear that lurks ready to spring into action as soon as one is alone or as soon as the lights go out or as soon as one’s social defenses are temporarily removed,” Thurman wrote in the 1940s. His words still ring true.
If the pandemic year has clarified anything, it is the preciousness of time. Fear and its comrades — anger, resentment and regret — are prodigious time wasters. We squander time by worrying about what might never happen. We revere time when we face down our fears — and make that career change, write that book, forge ahead with that relationship, or brave that apology.
One of my favorite passages is in the gospel of Matthew. In the scene, Jesus approaches a boat where the apostles are huddled one stormy night by walking on a roiling sea. When he beckons for Peter to come to him, Peter jumps out of the boat and he too begins to walk on the water.
It is only when the wind intensifies and he becomes afraid that Peter starts to sink, calling out, “Lord save me.” What happens next is telling. Jesus reaches out his hand and prevents Peter from going under. Perhaps we should keep that image in mind when our fear threatens to sink the pursuit of one of our dreams.
Howard Thurman touched on why we need to confront the terrors that can paralyze us in an address to graduating students at Spelman College in 1980, the year before he died:
“There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. Nobody like you has ever been born and no one like you will ever be born again — you are the only one. And if you miss the sound of the genuine in you, you will be a cripple all the rest of your life. Because you will never be able to get a scent on who you are.”
This week, can we reflect on the fears we have overcome in the past? What fears currently are holding us back? What would it take for us to step out onto the water?
