Do You Choose to Live Your Life in Fear or Reason?
Living in fear is a choice – even when it doesn’t feel like it.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a surreal experience. And it’s changed the world – not for the better.
Maybe it was ultimately unavoidable that COVID would become a darker, nastier influenza. Speculating on the “what ifs?” is moot because you can’t undo, redo, or change the past.
The unfortunate reality is that COVID is here to stay. You can take all the precautions in the world – but unless you utterly isolate and hide away from life – the odds of not getting COVID are stunningly low.
Vaccinations do not prevent the disease. But they DO make it far less likely to kill you. Vaccinations most likely will keep you from having a case so severe that you would need to be hospitalized.
Like it or not, COVID is here to stay. Even with all the deaths and those who are less fortunate and wind up with long-COVID and related ongoing medical issues, it’s going to remain with us for the rest of our lifetimes.
The level of fear that COVID sparked in the world is surreal. When we already live in a fear-based society, the added fear COVID brought on has been distressing and devastating on many levels.
It’s created a divide between people as the constant, ongoing struggle to keep transmission levels low, masking, and levels of necessary precautions spark debates. The anger of those who feel anybody not masking is an asshole is equal to the anger of those who feel mask-wearers are assholes.
All of it drives fear to new heights. And that gets so embedded in your psyche that you don’t realize that you DO have a choice.
You choose to live in fear
While too much of the messaging of our society reflects that it’s fear-based, you and I still have a choice.
You can live in fear. Or you can live in reason.
The opposite of fear isn’t fearlessness. It’s reason. It’s the ability to look at what you fear and say, “It’s bad, but it’s not going to dictate my life experience.” Then, you apply reason – not reckless abandon – to counter the fear.
Some people, in the post-pandemic world of today, remain uber-isolated. They avoid gatherings and crowds, mask everywhere they go, and actively choose to remain apart. This is not a judgment – it’s recognition of this truth.
You can’t think, feel, intend, or act for anyone other than yourself. Hence, you can’t know if the choice to remain uber-isolated was made as a result of fear or reason. You only get to choose that for yourself.
You choose if you live in fear.
It’s not an easy choice. And it’s also never one-and-done. You make that choice with anything and everything you do.
Yes, you might decide to go to the grocery store, not wear a mask, and risk getting COVID. Believe it or not, you might decide to go the grocery store, wear a mask, and still risk getting COVID. While masking has at least a minute effect on transmission – it’s far more of a psychological one.
Aware of this, I’m reasoning to choose to still wear a mask when I go shopping or am in any smaller enclosed space with a lot of strangers. But on the other side of that coin – in a gathering of friends and the familiar, I’m less likely to mask.
That choice, on my part, is to live in reason rather than in fear.
Fear, reason, and what you can and can’t control
This is going to be a very blunt statement. When all is said and done – unless you choose to take your own life – you can’t control when, how, or where you will die. But you will die.
Sorry, that’s the truth of your existence. You live and you die. Death is inevitable. And it’s often the single greatest fear many suffer.
Fear of death has stayed the hand of many and kept them from living. And by that, I mean active, intentional living – rather than merely existing.
That’s the difference. Everyone exists. Not everyone lives.
How does that work? In the simplest terms, it comes down to active choice. Do you make active decisions to do or not do things – or live passively and just let life happen to you?
Everyone makes active decisions along the way. You can’t not do so because nobody can live purely passively. But apart from seemingly inconsequential active choices, many don’t take the wheel and steer life how they might desire to.
Why? For some, I think it’s fear of getting it wrong. That’s stayed my hand more than once. For others, fear of failure. I suspect, most of all, it’s about fear of the unknown.
To some, the very little you genuinely control in this life is disconcerting. Like the odds of contracting COVID, you have zero control. I’ve gotten all the vaccinations, mask regularly, maintain social distancing – and I still got COVID at the end of 2022.
What I did choose was to live my life. I took new precautions, increased my situational awareness – and the uncontrollable still hit.
But because I made the active choices that I did, I have no regrets. And now that I’ve had COVID, I’m still making active choices rather than letting fear dictate my life.
Why does the choice matter?
The choice matters because you get one shot at this life. You choose – every day – how actively or passively you live.
Are you actively choosing reason or fear? Or are you passively merely existing and allowing fear to dominate?
Because odds are, if you are merely existing – you do so in fear. Not because you chose to do so – but rather, because this fear-based society dominates the subconscious mind and society’s collective consciousness.
How? Messages of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency are your constant companions. Consumerism and our capitalist society sells you shit you don’t need by convincing you that you should fear what you miss out on if you don’t buy. When you merely exist, you are much more likely to be a victim.
If you are assaulted, raped, robbed, or fall ill, you are a victim in that moment. After the moment passes, however – and some of you won’t appreciate this statement in the least – the choice is yours.
Live in fear and stay a victim – or – Live in reason and be unbroken.
It doesn’t always feel like you do, in fact, have a choice. But you do. How long it takes to recognize and act on that, however, is as variable as you and I are.
The choice matters because it dictates if you let fear move you or use reason to move yourself. Yes, sometimes you will just go with the flow and merely exist. But you always can make active choices. That’s your superpower.
And you are worthy and deserving of employing it.
Your life matters more than you know
You, your life, and your choices matter.
It’s easy to feel unimportant and insignificant in the world. That’s a result of living in a fear-based society. But because of the stigma attached to mental health, it’s often disregarded or shunted to the side.
You have every right to live your life as you see fit. But when you choose to live in fear, you choose to cede your power to it. Fear will keep you disempowered. But it won’t keep you safe.
And that’s the long and short of it. Fear – when it was a matter of life and death in the days of humankind being hunter-gatherers – kept you safe. Fear – when it’s intangible and frequently measuring against other people and intangibles – keeps you disempowered. But not safe.
Humans evolved, and while fear evolved – it also didn’t. Facing fear has become increasingly avoided – look at all the trigger warnings given so people can do exactly that – rather than faced.
But avoiding it doesn’t remove it.
The only way to counter fear is via reason. And that comes from mindfulness of yourself. That conscious awareness – here and now – is active knowledge of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. Ultimately, that empowers you and lets you choose reason.
As scary as the world can be – how much you let it scare you is a choice you make. And your life and choosing to live it on your terms matters more than you know. Why? Because you’re here, now, to give this world your gifts.
You’re a superhero. Your power is choice. And you get to use it every day. Don’t shy from that – revel in it.
That’s why I choose and share my Pathwalking life philosophy. It’s my gift to share actively and mindfully.
What do you choose – live in passive fear or active reason?
This is the five-hundred-and-eightieth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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