Fear, Itself

by C.Reed Weber

We had a big thunderstorm the other day. I happened to be sitting near two women when a tremendous roll of thunder shook the windows of the shop we were in. The younger woman, mother of three young children, shivered, “I hate storms. They frighten me. I hate to be around the kids when there’s a storm, because I don’t want them to see I’m scared.”

“It’s bad for them to see you are afraid,” agreed the older woman.

I pondered this for a moment before I spoke to the younger woman, “Sometimes it isn’t about not being afraid, it’s about being afraid and having the courage to face the fear.” Both women made noises of agreement in response to my statement, but I don’t think they really understand what I was trying to say.

I was trying to convey is that it isn’t important to be unafraid. What is important is being afraid and facing the fear. Too often, adults feel they need to be fearless and when they find they cannot, they become angry at themselves. It’s okay to be afraid; no one is immune to fear, but how an individual deals with fear is part of what defines character.

In the classic Western, High Noon, Gary Cooper’s character is Marshall of a frontier town. A criminal he sent to be hanged has been pardoned and is returning on the noon train to face him. The townspeople urge the Marshall to run away. At first, he and his wife leave. But the Marshall realizes he can’t run away from the problem and returns to town. The film explores how he deals with the fear of his own mortality and how he eventually is able to face both his fear and his would-be executioner.

There seems to be a mysterious disconnect between what adults feel adults should be, and what adults are in reality. Adults are not children who have outgrown emotional responses. Children become adults when they learn to manage their emotional responses.

C.Reed Weber has been writing since she first discovered an unguarded pencil and continues today as a freelance journalist and grant writer. Living Beyond the Worst has been adapted from Happy Thoughts, a collection of email columns she wrote for friends and family during 2008-2009. Weber is currently working on developing Happy Thoughts into a book. You can purchase mini-volumes of Happy Thoughts from her Etsy site.