Rose on duty this afternoon.

September 20, 2008 – I am working on this issue of life and fear, and sharing what I am learning in the hopes it will be helpful to somebody else. I like the idea that writers leave some of their ideas behind, and I was thinking today – not morbidly at all – that one day long after I am gone, somebody will be googling their way through writings about fear and come across some of mine. It’s a nice thought.
  I am beginning – just beginning, really – to see that fear is an engine running inside me all of the time, and life tends to trigger it again and again. Fear is a bit like colored glass, I think, in that it distorts what I see, and sometimes takes me out of reality. Someone I am close to is very worried about the stock market these days, and when she looks at how it is doing, is driven deep into fear about her life and future.
  But you have more than enough money to get through the next couple of years, I said, trying to be helpful, even as I knew that the fear had nothing really to do with the market, or her money, any more than my fears have much to do with the reality of my own life.
 I have a process now, which allows for the distortion of fear and helps clarify it for me, bring me closer to reality. I feel it, then pause, and remind myself that fear is one thing, truth is another. Then I proceed with life. This engine – fear is an engine of faith, I think, in a disturbing way – runs and runs, feeding on old and instinctive fuels and reflexes. It is tiresome, stubborn, wearying. Frightening.
 But it doesn’t have an awful lot to do with my life, and I will not confuse it with reality.