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Insurance companies sent us press releases during the holidays. Inviting your friends over for Christmas? they queried. Having a drink? Better call up your insurance professional to ensure you're adequately covered if there's an accident. Implied: your friends might be feeling litigious.
"Every time we choose safety, we reinforce fear."
Cheri Huber, Zen teacher.
It's fun to joke about paranoid insights or unwarranted warnings until you consider how many people take tranquilizers, the less fashionable term for anti-anxiety medications, to deaden the pain of daily life. Most of us aren't afraid of our friends. Getting one hour's less sleep doesn't prompt us to force ourselves to bed 15 minutes early every night for a week (before we're tired, even) because we expect daylight savings to wreak such havoc. For the anxiety-ridden, every warning echoes. Fear of not being able to sleep keeps them awake, distress only amplified by expert testimony.
It's a time of pervasive fear, not just stock-market or job-loss phobias bloated by a slow economy. I hear the phrase "safety net" all the time-a bleating voice threatening a lack of security.
"In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I was in college in Illinois, the county I lived in was desperate to foster entrepreneurs, but no one volunteered. While Wal-Mart flourished, the near-vacant downtown was thick with "for lease" and "for sale" signs. I heard a radio broadcast about the problem. Officials were puzzled: why wouldn't anyone open a business? After some discussion, they reached a conclusion. No one wanted to take the risk, and a solid middle management job-a life dictated by bosses and bureaucracy, no freedom, little room for personal contribution or true satisfaction-was preferable to the unknown.
I enjoyed the (lightly profane) Web blog entry "Fear is the Mind Killer of the Silicon Valley Entrepreneur" (Oct. 10, 2008). The blogger's take on it: "being an entrepreneur is a friggin' FEAR FACTORY ... YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL. MULTIPLE TIMES, in NEW & INTERESTING ways."
We all will, in our jobs and lives. His message: get over it. In lieu of quoting FDR's famed "all we have to fear" speech, let me quote (as the person who cancelled all her plans Sunday for a Severe Weather Advisory, 4-7 inches of snow, a flake of which never fell):
"I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship."
-Louisa May Alcott
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©The Chetek Alert 2010
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