Fear

 

In the introduction to his March 4, 1933 Inaugural Address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “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." While we share “common difficulties . . . our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for.” 

I daily encounter people who are driven by fear. They are “meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly.” Marcus Aurelius says people are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. Roosevelt is right: It is unjustified to behave this way and we have more than enough, so what’s the problem? The source of fear must lie in another realm, where we can easily be our own worst enemy. Our task is to show people what is good and what is evil. We have nothing to fear, as “we have still much to be thankful for.”