When a society loses connection with its ideals crazy and tragic events begin to occur. Fear can be seen as the root cause of losing connection with what matters in life. The recent shooting of 15 year old Christopher Penley in Longwood Florida is a case in point. This tragic event was the direct result of fear being the dominant emotion in much of our public discourse today. Fear permeates our conversations, is the staple of the Bush Administration’s pronouncements and decisions, and fuels the evening newscasts. As a people, we have become fearful of other nations, other religions, other lifestyles, the intent of our elected leaders and, it seems, even fearful of our children. We are fearful of globalization, declines in the stock market, bubbles bursting and our lives changing.
When fear replaces love, hope and appreciation all motion stops. Fear is a contracting emotion. Fear is the reason we lose connection with our ideals. Fear makes it oh so easy to lose our focus on what we say matters in our life. In the United States we founded a country on an ideal that espoused life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have enshrined ideals spoken by leaders past – Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream…” and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address – as worthy of aspiration, worthy of sacrifice. Yet today we take the easy road. In a very real sense, for many people it is much easier to talk about our ideals than it is to live them. It's much easier to believe that those "in charge" will protect us. When we surrender our freedoms and our ideals to fear, when we abdicate our responsibility to do what it takes to live free of fear in an uncertain world, we have truly become immobile.
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