“The only thing we have to fear… is fear itself” — Franklin Delano Roosevelt
From the beginning I’ve tried to keep politics out of this blog, and I hope it can be recognized that I am still trying to do so with this post, though I’m sure some will see an issue one way or another. I feel what I have to say isn’t political, but it will be controversial.
This blog was intended to explore a lot of things, but one of the main points of focus was the aftermath of life change, specifically the loss of employment. One of the land mines to avoid in that aftermath is fear. So many of us live life fearing one thing or another. Losing a job — your only source of income, having a mountain of debt hanging over you and no income to throw at it, looking for an answer to your problem and coming up empty; those things can strike some real fear into a person.
The truth is people are filled with fear — fears of failure, rejection, loss, emptiness. Fears of change, judgement, and uncertainty swarm around us. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 18.1% of the U.S. population or 40 million adults are affected by anxiety. In the UK Mental Health Today reports 49% of young people ages 18 -24 years old claimed high levels of stress. While 36% of women claimed anxiety related to self-esteem, body image, and appearance.
Fear impacts mental and personal outlook, emotional reaction, and the stability of relationships. When a large segment of young adults live their lives under anxiety and fear, it has a strong impact on our society. Another problem with fear is that it often vents as anger. Individuals at odds with their fears, finding no other way to deal with that fear, strike out in anger at anyone and anything that can serve as a target for their release. And it takes very little observation to see that the fear of Covid-19 seems to be sending that segment of our society, along with others over the edge.
Hear is where this blog really gets controversial.
STOP!
JUST STOP!
Stop living in fear. Can’t you see what it is doing to you? Can’t you see that your fears are of no benefit to you or anyone else?
Let’s suppose we all locked down until this virus just disappeared. Although I don’t believe this is possible, for the sake of argument let’s pretend it could be — the virus disappears and we exit our isolation happily. According to the CDC Statistics, out of those of us who successfully navigated the Covid Highway 647,457 of us will still die of heart disease. Another 599,108 will die from cancer. Accidents will kill 169,936 of those Covid-Free individuals. Respiratory Disease will take away the breath of 160,201 individuals, while strokes will strike out another 146,383.
During the 2017-2018 flu season, 48.8 million people in the U.S came down with influenza. Of those infected, 22.7 million felt sick enough to visit their healthcare provider, while 959,000 were actually hospitalized. Sadly, 79,400 people died of an illness which has killed 337,157 individuals in the United States in the last 10 years while flu vaccinations rose from 110,000,000 in 2008 to 170,000,000 in 2018. These stats exist despite the fact that the United States began large scale immunization against influenza in 1945.
Of course I could go on, but you get the point. People are going to die. It happens. In fact, it will happen to every man, woman, and child on the face of this earth. It is the natural course of life. A healthy human body creates cells faster than they die up to age twenty-five. After age twenty-five the process slows and cells begin dying faster than they are produced. It can be said, we begin dying at that age.
Many people have this idea that we can shelter in place until we get a vaccine for this virus. Aside from not being practical, it is unlikely we that a vaccine will solve the problem. Even if there is a Covid Vaccine, people will still die. They’ve been dying with a flu vaccine for 75 years.
It’s time to face reality, you are going to die. You are a carbon-based life form. You have no control over when your life will end. You could be a vegan health-conscious cyclist with near perfect blood-pressure and a cholesterol level that would impress a Johns Hopkins educated cardiologist just emerging from your Covid-Cave for a social distanced ride, only to find your life ended by a harried soccer mom running late with after practice snacks.
Does the fact that you are going to die mean you should be stupid, reckless, or irresponsible? No, but it also means you can’t live your life in fear of death, illness, college debt, job choices, social acceptance, or any other irrational reason for creating your own anxiety. Life goes by quickly. If you haven’t realized that yet, you will. When you see your youth has slipped by and you recognize that more and more of your peers or friends are no longer around, you’ll recognize how quickly life really moves.
Life is for living. If you fear death, it is likely by association you fear living. You need to come to a conclusion about your own life. You have a mind. You have the freedom of will and thought. You have several choices:
- If you have no visions of life after death, no faith, no religious flicker of thought, and no reason to consider that life is any more that the chemical reactions happening within you, you can live your life at full speed with no concern for when the lights are going to flash red and no fear of what happens when the lights finally go out. (And lets face it, if you don’t believe in life after death, if life is just a chemical reaction — isn’t it rather irrational you would fear the end of that reaction in the first place? You are just another weed in earth’s garden)
- If you believe there is more to life than just what we see here in this moment; that life goes on in another form or another place, then you can set your fears aside or offer them up to a God who does have control over when and how things happen. You can live without fear of dying because you have faith that this is just one phase of life.
- And yes, you could continue to bury yourself in your fears.
The choice is yours as to the perspective you allow to control your approach to living, but you have no choice when it comes to dying. Accepting that you will meet your untimely demise is a realization with which you simply have to come to terms, or it will happen while you are still fearing what got you.
Hiding from life by hiding from a disease is no way to live. And since I mentioned hiding out and locking down from the Covid-19 virus, I’ll offer my humble opinion on self-isolation. Don’t fool yourself; you can’t hide from this virus. It is a virus and it will run its course. You can stay in your cave and wait it out. You can mask it up, and sanitize everything around you. You can go on rants and raves against those who have chosen to go on with life while you lock down. But the moment you exit your Covid-hibernation you will be exposed to any place where it survives or any individual who might still carry the virus. And since you’ve self-isolated from society, keeping yourself away from any of those pesky germs, your immune system will be weakened and you will be even more vulnerable than you were when you went into your Covid-Free Cave.
Get started living again.
It’s time to fear… fear itself.
