I had a long talk the other night with a good and valuable friend. She has nearly been shut down by fear. She is afraid to drive, and she peruses menus for toxins like a prospector looking for gold. The economy, she said. Health care. The news. Climate Change. Finances and mid-life anxiety and crises. Loneliness. Cancer. She is very intelligent, very competent. It was hard to hear. I told her that I am not in the business of advice, and I am not a therapist. I could only share this with her.

I have come to see fear (and anger) as a space to cross. We all have these emotions, and have to live with them, every day, really. Unfortunately, we live in a culture nearly driven mad by anger and insecurity, much of it fed continuously by corporate notions of marketing, advertising, politics, health and information, all for profit, all involving staggering amounts of money. Fear is literally sold and promoted through the air, our computers, cell phones, tv’s, radios and political culture.

Our time is short, our choices are clear. To live in fear, or to live.

I see it as a geography. It is a space to cross. It is just like a lawn or a meadow or a pasture. You simply feel it, acknowledge it, and walk right through it, out the other side and into your life. There is so little of life that we really control. Health doesn’t come from tests any more than security comes from money.

Our own emotions, the things we accept, absorb, take into our consciousness are choices, and they affect the way we think, how frightened we are, how healthy we are, how well we sleep, how much courage we can muster to move through our fears and answer the call to life. It’s a seminal choice, I told her, life or death. I have chosen to move away from medicine sold as fear, from politics sold as fear or anger, from weather sold only as menace, from incessant warnings and the idea that technology can keep us alive forever. There is only so much room in my head, and I choose to fill it with things that are positive, nourishing, creative and meaningful. Those things are rarely sold for money, not on the Stock Market, not of interest to lobbyists or members of Congress.

I hope she crosses that space.