The Rules of Fear

When I was little and had to get up at night, I would leap far from my bed, convinced that a monster’s slimy, scaly claw would burst from beneath my mattress and snare my ankles if I didn’t, dragging me down into the underworld. But If I leaped far enough, landing somewhere squarely in the middle of the room, just out of reach of the bed, I could defeat the monster. Those were the rules.

Of course, this doesn’t make any sense: if the monster wanted to grab me and pull me to hell, it probably wouldn’t flail about. No, it’d probably team up with the monster in my closet (who I adamantly felt I could defeat by keeping the door shut at night) and escape into the real world, unencumbered by any fantasy of security I had in my adolescent mind. But I was little and naive and believed in the sanctity of my own rules.

Now that I’m an adult, you’d think the logic of my rules would be more complete, but the logic remains the same. For instance, I firmly believe that if I wear my seatbelt, obey traffic laws and street signs, don’t use my phone while driving, and go the speed limit, I’m safe from crashes. Seems like a good rule. But you’ll notice this rule doesn’t account for the whims and mistakes of every other driver on the road. This rule for operating a vehicle is shaped by the things I can control, and yet it assumes that being in complete control of my actions influences how other drivers perform in my presence. It’s flawed when dissected. But the underlying fear is so great, the consequences so serious, that I don’t think I’d ever drive anywhere again without this rule.

I believe that if I am open and transparent with a person, if I meet others as humans and treat them as I want to be treated, any person can become a friend and an ally. But as it turns out, having this one-size-fits-all rule about humanity is a great way to be taken advantage of, as has happened plenty of times in my life. But if I didn’t have this rule, every interaction becomes a fearful melange of doubt and over-anticipatory self-preservation, weighing motives, every moment spent in concert with someone else reduced to a series of unanswerable “What if?“s. Without this rule, I’d probably never interact with another soul ever again.

I’ve heard the phrase “the lies we tell ourselves” when discussing the things that get us through the day. Maybe they’re not actually lies per se, but truths we willfully ignore, and maybe those truths are fears we remediate with rules. It could be said that actively filtering the world around us means you’re not living in the real world, but if the hallmark of the real world is a truly unfiltered worldview, I highly doubt anyone is living there permanently.

Lately, however, the “real world” has become almost inescapable. And by that, I mean it’s becoming difficult to create rules for my own fears to help me navigate the day-to-day.

The threat of nuclear war has been the greatest since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It keeps me up at night. And so, to sleep easier, I make up a rule, like, as long as I’m not living within 6.54 miles of a geo-political or economic center, the chance that the bad guys will attempt to blow up my house is actually quite minimal. I know after reading that sentence, you’re probably absolutely bursting with optimism. It’s not a rule that completely addresses my fears, but it’s better for me than dwelling in the unfathomable. It doesn’t attempt to cover the fallout or the human cost, it’s simply something within my control.

I fear for the state of democracy in my country, and so I tell myself that the idiots speak louder and get more airtime than the sensible ones and that most everyone I know is reasonably sensible, that the moment we’re having is just a moment. But I don’t know everyone in my country or even my own town, hell, even my own street, and so this rule relies on the bubble I live in being representative of the general populace. Again, not a great rule, but it stops me from expecting the worst.

Some of these rules can feel like faith. I don’t deny or reject this comparison. Faith in technology and science, humanity’s general goodness, and the divine can all help us get through the day. And the faithful can treat their beliefs as the basis of fact. But I’m not a man of deep faith. I’m a man of many beliefs that are always being unmade and tested. (As I write this, I wonder if that’s what real faith actually looks like). My rules as they exist are simply constructs that reflect where my compass needle is currently pointing.

In that vein, I recently changed one of my rules. I’m fearful that in an economic collapse, a food shortage would leave my family and me starving, unable to provide for each other. The rule I made up was that if things got dire, we could migrate to an area of the country with more agriculture, and we’d be near the front of the line for food, avoiding the impossible logistics of the supply chain. I never liked that rule. It felt like escapism. After watching the war in Europe boil over, I changed my rule. Instead, I think that if we lend a helping hand and work tirelessly to better the lives of those around us, it might come all back around. This sounds like faith, but I see it as the rules of a simple economy that barters deeds and favors with food, water, and shelter. And again, this rule is based purely on what I can control all the while assuming the goodwill of others.

Sometimes, especially when I’m tired, I’ll see someone I know well, like my parents or brothers or folks around town or people I know from work, and I’ll suddenly lose all of the associations I have with them, all of the qualities they represent to me. They look remarkably unfamiliar as if they were strangers in a crowd. For an instant, I physically see them as the summation of all their trying, their guessing, their stumbling through life; in a fraction of a moment they are just as fearful and confused and trying-their-goddamn-best as me. It can be overwhelming to think that none of us truly have this world figured out, when so often I count on the perceived wisdom and guile and completely-togetherness of others to help me retain a sense of normalcy in my own life. My rules depend on these people being dependable, I assume so much of them. In some ways, it’s entirely unfair to saddle them with the weight of my own uncertainty.

Am I a fearful person? Though fear is a major motivator in my life, I wouldn’t say I’m any more fearful than the next. Some of my fears are rational, and many are irrational, but most of my life is spent being curious and in wonder than in a constant state of fear. This may be afforded to me by my social and economic status, it could be my upbringing, or it could be part of my DNA. But, as I’ve outlined here, I am not uncomplicated by fear. And certainly, I don’t have a rule that helps me with every fear. Take death, for instance. Not the sudden, tragic, happens in-the blink-of-an-eye death, the accidental death, the death that I have rules to help avoid. I mean the death at the end of a long life, the death one questions fruitlessly from the time they’re old enough to understand mortality to the day it finally happens. I don’t have a rule for that fear. It’s the one eventuality we all have, and all I have are uncertainties.

There are probably many more constructive ways to deal with fear. I know some practice hard to accept certain realities in their life, to plan for and stay in the present, let life take them where it will. Maybe that’s the one path forward, and these rules are just mitigations we put in place that don’t solve anything real. I’m happy for those folks who live fearless lives, through whatever mechanism allows them that comfort, whether it be faith or fact or something else. But for the rest of us, I think it’s good practice to interrogate our fears and see how they hold up in different light. Maybe the fear you have is beyond yourself. Maybe it’s something small and easily remedied. The important part is just learning to function in the face of that fear, however you can make it happen. That’s the rule.