I remember reading once that if you dig deep enough, the fundamental, most primal human problem is fear. It’s covered up by other emotions, but it’s the root of our problems.
God knows there are plenty of them—fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of danger, fear of loss, fear of death, and so on. A mystic rabbi once told me that the biggest human fear is the fear that our lives have no meaning.
In any case, fear is pervasive. It’s the all-purpose emotion that is so potent it has the power to debilitate and paralyze us.
During this pandemic year, fear has been especially prevalent, with the obvious focus on fear of death.
But now that the vaccine is showing us a light at the end of the tunnel, I’ve been wondering about the state of our emotions in a post-pandemic world. Once our singular fear of death, which has sucked up so much of our energy, starts to wane, will our other fears burst back to the surface?
Those traditional fears are also part of the “return to normal” so many of us crave. With the fear of the virus greatly reduced, we will be forced to confront them. We may even find that these “normal” fears don’t look or feel the same after this harrowing year.
Indeed, this may be a major silver lining: If there’s one thing the pandemic has taught us, it is that compared to death, all other human problems are secondary.
if our fear of death has gone way down and our appreciation of life has gone way up, maybe we’ll be better equipped to conquer our other fears.
In other words, if our fear of death has gone way down and our appreciation of life has gone way up, maybe we’ll be better equipped to conquer our other fears.
Shabbat shalom.
