At what point do we stop being afraid?
Wait, let me back up.
A few days ago, I posted that Bill Hicks video and, in it, he talked about the choice between Fear and Love. The choice between locking your door and helping a stranger. The choice between buying a gun and pulling over to help someone change their tire.
If you pay attention to the news-- local, national, or 24-hour-- fear is a pretty constant thing. Play this game some time: watch the local news and count the number of stories where the intent is not to make you afraid. If you get to over five, well you're in luck because you live in Canada.
Feel the love after the jump.
Odds are, there are less than five stories on your hour of local news that make you feel good about the community you live in. There's a reason for that. One is that the stuff that makes us afraid is usually the Big stuff, with an intentionally capital B, and it deserves greater attention. If dude is running around raping urrybody up in here, then it deserves a spot.
But part of it is because fear is easier than love.
If you've ever been in a relationship, you know love is hard. During rough patches, we all experience fear. Did I pick the right person? I never went after so-and-so and now I regret it. This thing drives me crazy up the wall and is that enough to leave someone? And it's always easier to give in to these questions than it is to fight through them, remember why you're with a person, and work through it.
We're willing to do it for the people we're with, but often we don't think it's worth it when it comes to society as a whole. It's easier to be afraid of Muslims than it is to realize that, for every violent extremist there are hundreds of normal people. It's easier to yell that a specific policy decision by the government is going to bring about the Biblical End of Days than it is to try to debate its actual merits in a reasoned environment. And it's easier to cross the street to avoid the homeless guy asking for some change than it is to buy dude a Big Mac.
Too often we make the choice of fear.
When I was in college, I was told by a fellow student one day that "My parents taught me that to make it in this world, somebody else has to be taken down."
I'm going to put that on a separate line so you get the full impact of that statement.
"My parents taught me that to make it in this world, somebody else has to be taken down."
How much blind fear is in that statement? Fear of others being successful. Fear of failure. Fear of not having money. Not only that, but it isn't even remotely true. The best way to be successful is to work together with others in a successful manner.
As Bill might say, we're all on the same ride.
We're asked periodically while we're on the ride to sacrifice someone else in order to save ourselves; it's a haunted house ride. It threatens to take you off the ride every so often unless you give it someone else. Too often, we allow the fear to overtake us and we readily give that sacrifice. We forget that the ride really can't do anything to us.
I fall into the trap, too. I accuse and I sneer and I'm sarcastic and mean when it's not necessary, when I'm only doing it to avoid something about another person or myself, when I do it just because I'm afraid.
But I'm trying to fight it.
At what point do we stop being afraid?
How about right now?
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