Thursday September 3, 2015 #753
“The conquest of fear is of very great importance. Fear is in itself degrading; it easily becomes an obsession; it produces hate of that which is feared, and it leads headlong to excesses of cruelty. Nothing has so beneficent an effect on human beings as security. …Fear, at present, overshadows the world. …If matters are to improve, the first and essential step is to find a way of diminishing fear.”
~Bertrand Russell
Fear is at the root of almost all human misery, with most of that fear imaginary and fed by negative media and negative people around us. It is a human weakness that we fear that which is different from us or unfamiliar. The reality, if we can rise above the fray to see it, is a world filled with caring, positive people perhaps waylaid by their own fears. My years as an expat have taught me to value the vast spectrum of humanity in terms of beliefs, cultures, and ethnicities and their richness when explored openly and without prejudice. Don’t allow yourself to be trapped into fearing those who believe, act, or look differently than you. There are so few truly “bad” people in the world. Don’t be blinded to the vast goodness in the world by unnecessary and groundless fears of what is unfamiliar or different than you.