The biggest epidemic of all is called Fear

Yesterday morning we woke up with a heavy heart. The discovery that Putin has launched a physical attack on Ukraine has left us feeling incredibly fragile. The word war resonates in the media after decades and it is not very far from us, does not concern unknown and remote people. Ukraine is around the corner, and who does not have a friend, an acquaintance from that region? Ukrainians are the women who take care of our elderly, Ukrainians are work colleagues in many British and European companies, they are familiar faces, hearts we know. And Ukraine is close, very close. The chills run down our backs...

I am sorry, but I am not surprised that the circus of power is giving us another emergency to worry about. Another drama that justifies exceptional measures, just as it was with the pandemic.

Another emergency that raises the level of adrenaline, fear and anger. A sequence we already know so well. 

Fear is the most continuous and tireless emotion and we are immersed in it. It begins as children when, from the first negative experiences we face, we begin to fear being punished or isolated, and then continue in school, where we constantly feel judged and are afraid of never being good enough. It gets stronger in the teenage years where we fear being different and less than the others. Finally, it becomes magnified in the professional world, where we are afraid of not being able to enter and, when we are inside, we are afraid of being thrown out. And this is not to mention our fears/insecurities regarding relationships, the fears of getting sick and suffering, right up to the gigantic fear of dying.

Our life seems to be a constant up and down between smaller and bigger fears. Have you ever wondered why?

Because fear weakens and removes responsibility. When you are afraid you need confirmation, support and protection and you look for all this outside yourself. Fear takes you away from yourself and makes you believe you are unable to work things out by yourself. The more you are afraid, the more helpless, small and needy you feel, which is the exact opposite of who you really are. Fear is a wonderful tool to take away your power and make you dependent on someone else or something else. If you are afraid, you can be manoeuvred, manipulated, blackmailed.

I’m sure I’m not telling you things you don’t know already, but I’m also sure that most of you believe there is no solution to this state of affairs and therefore you may abandon yourself to despair, depression and addictions to substances and people to try to soothe the anxiety or the pain that this acknowledgement creates.

And yet, the solution exists, and it is in the only place you never look because you are too distracted by everything else. The solution is within you; it is called self-consciousness, not ego. Self-consciousness, that giant, incorruptible, immortal Self that is experiencing life through your personality. "You were not made to live like brutes, but to serve virtue and knowledge" Dante said in the Divine Comedy. We did not come here to feel small, vilified, weak, but to expand our knowledge and our virtue through our experiences. Death, fear and judgment exist only in our belief systems. The immortal Self is only embarrassed to choose the next adventure.

Let's take back our sovereignty, let's get out of this perverse matrix, let's incorporate our greatness and say “enough” to any violence. It is truly shaming to see that a society that considers itself evolved still needs the blood of innocents to mend its power games.

There is no future whatsoever in bullying and brutality and there is no evolution whatsoever in constantly making the same mistakes.

(pic credits Ian Taylor for Unsplash)