A few days ago a delivery service left me a package that was supposed to go to someone else living in our apartment complex. I was expecting a package and so when the driver handed me the package and used my name I ‘assumed’ that this was the package I was expecting. I opened the package and it contained a medical device. I then looked at the name on the package. The name was, of course, not mine and the address was not my address.
I wondered for a bit how the driver could have made the error – he even used my name when he handed me the package. I also thought of taking the package to the apartment office; but it was late afternoon and the device in the package was a medical device. Perhaps, I thought, the person might need the device that day and so I decided to deliver the package.
The apartment was located in three buildings from mine. After locating the building I quickly found the apartment. A car was parked in the appropriate car port so I assumed someone would be at home. I knocked on the door, a dog barked and after a bit a voice on the other side of the door asked me what I wanted. I told the person I had a package for ‘S’ and that it had been delivered to my apartment by mistake. The door opened a crack and a face appeared. I immediately saw the fear in the person’s eyes. As calmly as I could I showed the person the package with the address label on it. The person, took the package and shut the door.
I walked away thinking how fear-full we have become. We are, it seems, a fear-full people. The more I thought about this as I drove back to my apartment the more overwhelmed I became by the fear-fullness that is running amok among us. I asked myself: Do we no longer know what a life without fear is like?
Today, more than ever before, there always seems to be something to fear: it begins ‘in here’ of course. It begins within ‘me.’ Fear also resides ‘outside’ of me. Fear is close by and fear is far away. Fear is visible in my eyes and in the eyes of the other; fear is also invisible, it is part of the climate. When was the last time we, as a nation, had a fear-free moment? When did our neighborhood have a fear-free moment? When was the last time I could knock on a ‘neighbor’s’ door and be greeted with a warm, welcoming, trusting smile rather than with eyes full of fear and mistrust?
Fear-fullness seems to be omnipresent; it is like a cloak we cannot shrug off. Perhaps the cloak of fear is representative of the heart of fear that resides within each of us? Like our physical heart, our heart of fear provides the life-blood that nurtures and sustains our fear-full life.
In subtle and not-so-subtle ways ‘fear’ victimizes and controls us. Fear nurtures our anger and suspicion and mistrust. Our fear can open the pathway to depression or, worse, to despair. Fear can also envelope us in darkness, a darkness that opens another pathway that leads to destruction, if not death.
Fear can become so overwhelming, so intolerable, that one is willing to do almost anything in order to get relief. At this point one might seek relief by shunning, ostracizing, marginalizing or guilt-free killing the ‘threat’ (think: the ‘stranger’ or the ‘other’ – the one, not like us). Some turn the fear upon themselves and end up killing themselves.
How often today is ‘fear’ an acceptable tap root that nurtures our decisions and that feeds our view of the world or that feeds our suspicions or our stereotypes, or prejudices or judgments or. . .? How often does our fear confirm our worst fears about the other(s)?
Fear corrupts. –John Steinbeck
Searcher-Seeker 
Leave a Reply