Fear
If the last few years have shown us anything it's that one, most of the people in this world live in fear, and two, that fear can be weaponized against them and by extension society. If we are to ever excel as an individual or a collective then we must be willing to let fear go. We must be willing to live without it. This sounds like a no brainer. After all, who wants to live with fear right? The cold hard truth though is that if this were the case, if we were willing to live without fear, there would be a lot less fear in this world. Fear is only their because we want it to be, because we choose it to be. Period. So, how do we find the willingness to let go of fear?
In order to be willing to let fear go, we need to understand what its significance is considered to be and the reality is that fear is considered to be so essential to life that if we were to let it go we would be left defenseless and would quite literally die. Despite all of its negative implications and effects, fear is considered to be such a fundamental component to human survival that is it though to be THE fundamental source of our existence and it is quite literally therefore a god. It is a tyrannical, abusive, destructive god, but a god never the less. This reality must be accepted and faced.
The saving grace in all of this though, is that it’s not true. Any preventive steps that you would take out of fear to preserve your own life or the lives of others can also be taken out of reasonable caution or love. You are capable of making wise decisions, for example, out of gratitude and love for you life and because you respect it rather than because you fear potential negative consequences. Whatever society or your own life experience may tell you, fear is NOT the source of your survival. God is. It is safe to let it go. It is safe to be without fear. It is safe to move beyond it, all you have to do is be willing to replace it with gratitude, love, and respect and the first step in this process is to find something worth living for.
Through out the last two years, this was actively avoided in the media and the culture at large. People were constantly told that their lives were/are under constant threat and, out of this fear (bordering on hysteria), they would take the whatever extreme and even ridiculous steps they were told to in order to survive, but this is just the point… they were never encouraged to actually live. People were not taught to have courage.
Courage is not the absence of fear, but the belief that something else is more important. And so, what is worth the risk of living? What is worth protecting? What is worth fighting for? What is worth building? Start by asking these questions, be open to the answers you find, and be willing to ask for the strength to stand up for these things. Life is to short and to preciouses to waste.