Anxious people are often narcissistic and for obvious reasons. Fear soaks up so much of our spirit and energy.

This is especially true in a world who beams it into our consciousness a thousand times a day, in graphic color and from all over the world.

Not too long ago, the function of journalism was to cull the most important events of the day and present them to us once a day, in the morning or evening. Today, the function of fo media is different. Fear and anger are profitable, it seems, and so the role of media and politics is to keep us frightened so we can stay engaged.

If you listen to the people running for office, almost all of them spent most of their time asking us to be outraged or terrified. It seems to work. There is no money in hope and good works.

The big lesson for me about fear – I have been treated for anxiety for much of my life, it is a family disorder – was that everyone but the sociopaths feels it and knows it. There is nothing I have felt that just about every person reading this has not felt, or will not feel.

Fear is a universal emotion, perhaps created to keep us vigilant and focused in a dangerous world. We just feel it or acknowledge it in different degrees.
What I’ve learned is that if my soul silences my spirit by an act of violence, hatred, or fear, my spirit will be punished as well as my body.

In our world, fear is a gazillion dollar profit center, from The Weather Channel to cable news and iPhone notifications. The more anxious we are, the more we need to buy and spend in the search for security and safety.

Us fear specialists – 30 years of therapy counts – know that money is not a cure for fear; it just offers us another way to stay anxious. I have learned that fear is geography, sometimes useful but most often just a space to cross. There is grace on the other side of fear I am finding.

New studies have found that people who hope and are optimistic about their future live longer than other people. And optimism is closely aligned to fear.

The more fear one feels, the less optimistic. I’ve always thought of anxiety as a public health issue.

And I’ve learned that the angriest and nastiest people are almost always the most frightened. One day I will learn to treat them with that understanding.  A person who writes a letter to my breeder warning against my getting a puppy is not a healthy person or a happy one. But reading her messages, I can almost smell her fear, it is a part of her hatred.

She just wants some power and control.

What does being merciful mean? That we are only kind to the people we love, and who love us? I think true spirituality goes a little deeper.

Optimism, reports Science Daily,  refers to a general expectation that good things will happen, or believing that the future will be favorable because we can control essential outcomes.

What I’ve learned about my anxiety is that most of my fear was not real, or based on reality.

My anxiety has never overwhelmed my optimism or my hope for the future. I think this saved me.

It is a symptom of neural learning, not an accurate picture. John Bowlby, the dean of Attachment Theorists, wrote that fear is born in us when our mothers do not know we are frightened and can’t or won’t soothe us, or teach us that fear is temporal and can be overcome.

Fear is a way of looking at the world we experienced when we were very young and were trapped with the fear inside us. We can’t change the way we were raised, but we can change the way we look at the world if we are serious about doing that work.

Grace is the opposite of fear. Grace is charitable, forgiving, merciful, kind; it does not seek or worry about its interests. Grace inspires us to find peace and love and to do good.

Our whole being, body, and soul, is spiritualized and elevated by grace.

The spiritual person seeks a meaningful life over fear and even human nature. Worry has never solved a problem for me, made me safer or more secure, or made my life better in any respect.

When I feel fear these days, I recognize it as a symptom, not the truth about my life. I have problems, and you have problems, I know fear and you know fear, there is no perfect life.

But it is never fear that solves these problems for me. Quite the opposite, it is optimism and grace.

I will do the best I can for as long as I can, and that is all I can do. That is enough.