Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself (Day 252)

Image Credit: Robin Wood (Tarot Deck)

---

But there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate.”
Seneca, Moral Letters, 13.12b

---

We’ve all heard FDR’s famous sound-bite about, “... the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…”, right? Most folx have no idea the rest of the context of the statement, even though they can recite, from memory, the entirety of the Bene Gesserit’s Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert’s Dune. Here’s the entire Roosevelt quote from his inaugural address, in context: 

Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” - FDR

​Roosevelt, who came into power during the early days of the “Great Depression”, was determined not to let an already bad situation turn worse. He knew that fear was the one thing that could upset the entire apple cart, and as he was stepping into office, he told America what he thought about fear, and how he planned on handling fear. 

He’d not surrender and inch to fear. 

Fear, I like to tell my congregants, is an acronym: Fantasies Experienced As Reality. It’s from these fantasies which misery’s necessary delusions arise. Fear is the result of our imagination being hijacked and stolen by a cowardly ego. 

Fear makes us faint-hearted. Fear makes us fragile. 

(See y’all tomorrow)