Embracing fear

I almost skipped work this morning.

As do so many others in D.C., I take the metro downtown every day for work.  I ride the most highly trafficked line, during the most highly trafficked hours.  

{mosads}After this weekend’s atrocity in Paris, after the video released by ISIS, I’ll admit it:  I was afraid to make the commute.  How easy it would be, I thought, for a terrorist to walk onto the platform, board the train, and kill us all.  How effortless it would be for some attacker to slip in, unannounced and unstoppable, and add us to ever-growing list of victims of terror.  All of us commuters wear backpacks; bomb-toting terrorists would fit right in.  And even if they did stand out, even if someone did notice them, there would be absolutely nothing any of us could do.

I stood outside the station for several minutes wondering if I should enter.  I talked myself into turning around and going home—I would just call in sick.  But then I thought about what I would do tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that, and the day after that, every day, ad infinitum, for the rest of my life.  I couldn’t avoid work forever. I would have to board the metro some day.  And so, I did.  And of course, I made it to work just fine.  There was no attack.  I wasn’t so much as looked at the wrong way. 

Of course, this is not the first time in this nation’s history, nor the world’s, that the cruelty of a few should cause trepidation in the many.  Movie theaters, buses, office buildings, and even elementary schools—they have all been the sites of terrorism.  As a result, they have all become spaces of anxiety, of checking for exits, of scanning the crowd for suspicious faces.

And yet, we are not allowed to categorize them as such.  Paul Krugman, echoing a sentiment we’ve heard far too frequently since 9/11, said in the New York Times this morning “…the goal of terrorists is to inspire terror, because that’s all they’re capable of. And the most important thing our societies can do in response is to refuse to give in to fear.” 

He’s right, of course.  Just as the Brits kept calm and carried on even as the sky above their scepter’d isle was punctured by V2 rockets, just as Israelis surrender their purses and pockets to inspection every time they buy groceries, just as we take off our shoes to shuffle through airport inspections, just as so many people around the world, in countless ways, acknowledge and accept and overcome fear, so too now must we all swallow our fear and just carry on, dammit. 

It’s worth emphasizing, though, that Krugman is not discouraging us from feeling fear—merely from giving in to it.  This distinction is subtle, but it is important. 

To be afraid is to “let the terrorists win.” That’s what people say.  But to not be afraid is to deny reality and deny our normal response to the murderous barbarity of our enemies.  If we don’t feel fear, “the terrorists win” in a different way:  They have made us unrealistic and false.  And so, I say, let us be afraid.  Only if we acknowledge fear can we achieve courage.  Fools may be fearless.  The brave acknowledge fear—gaze into its eyes, and smell its stench—and do not turn away.  Courage is not denying fear.  It’s more than overcoming it.  It is learning to live with it.

My fellow men and women of Washington, so long as we allow ourselves to recognize our fear, and not become enthralled by it, we can indeed be the home of the brave and the land of the free. 

Chevlen is a writer and editor living in Washington, D.C.