07 May 2009

litany against fear...

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Litany against fear
Bene Gesserit incantation
from Dune by Frank Herbert

i thought of this when i was posting a comment on Pam's House Blend to an article about the right wingers being all aflutter about the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill about which i have previously posted.

one of the things i have always observed is that the louder people oppose or deride something, the more it seems that they are running from something that they fear.

fear underlies so much of the ills and problems we see all around us, and rather than embracing it we run away and avoid it. what we are missing are the lessons that we could learn from facing it.

i always end my emails with a little saying i used when i was working with kids -

there is nothing wrong, only things that are missing...

i would quite often hear adults say that a kid had issues or was just bad or was slow. there were a myriad of prognostications i would hear. all of them made it seem that there was something wrong with the kid.

what i always discovered is that there was some piece of information that we didn't know; something that happened in the past of which we weren't aware; or a story that was made up and the child learned to believe it.

i would also find this to be true in almost all of the management situations i was in with adults. their reluctance was never defined, their doubt was never uttered, or their insecurity revolving aroung change never was stated. it was the same thing. there was always something that was missing; something i didn't know; or something i could not quite put my finger on.

when i found out what it was that was missing, i would always go, "ohhhhhhhh!" and everything was suddenly crystal clear. the missing piece made everything fall into place.

so i always looked for that thing that was missing. i still do.

behind all of it i always found fear. it is debilitating and i still fall into it myself. it is my/our nature.

it explains a lot and leaves a lot unanswered. but remember - there is always something missing...

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