Fear fear

In his inaugural address in 1933, Franklin D Roosevelt said: "[L]et me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

 

Fear blusters. It inflates the anticipation of an event into something worse than the actual event itself.

 

Worse still, fear has a habit of making things feared come true where they would not have realised had they not been feared.

 

What if everything you feared came to pass? What if the things you did not fear never came to pass? That would be incentive enough never to fear.

 

Those who fear do not fear the properties of fear. If they did, they would insist with themselves not to fear. Those who fear the potentiality and consequence of fear choose not to give fear free reign over the items they are tempted to fear about.

 

'Fear fear' is good advice. Those who do not fear the consequences of fear expose themselves to the ravages of it.