New year, new fears?

As a new year confronts us, it is but natural to feel fear. What will it be in the days ahead? Will it be a good one for me as a person or will it be a poor one? Whatever it is, nobody can be sure, for the future is one blank screen for everyone, moneyed or mendicant, literate or illiterate. Because of such uncertainty fear haunts the mind and troubles the heart. Uncontrolled, it could ruin one’s life making it an experience in bitterness and discontent.

And fear has many faces. To the young it could be failure to adequately prepare to join the mainstream of society. Failing to get a college exposure and therefore failing to get a decent job could be one such possibility. Failing to get a good partner and therefore suffering a miserable family life is another.

To the middle-age breadwinner, fear could take the form of the likelihood of losing one’s job or of getting ostracized by friends for a serious misconduct. To the elderly fear could harass him as he thinks of getting uncared for by close kins or of catching a dreaded disease.

From personal to social the clammy touch of fear could extend. This is but natural because each of us is not an island sufficient to himself. Each of us is, to paraphrase a poet, a portion of the main. Each of us is a part of the continent of Philippine nationhood. Therefore, whatever befalls that nationhood affects us in varying depths of impact and in different shades of pain.

Are workers on strike? This affects our productivity and even security because violence could break out. Are drivers boycotting the streets? This could impede travel and therefore affect business profitability. Is government corruption endemic? This could drain vital resources and hamstrung social services. More than this, it could give a wrong signal to young minds who could be misled into thinking that such practice is a normal one. More damaging is the fact that it drives away investors and therefore delimits development. It could be destructive too because when people’s patience breaks this could trigger mass actions and regimes could fall; hence, lawful processes are brushed aside, and what will happen to democracy?

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, a poet once wrote. Just like fears, we oftentimes don’t know what these are. There are so many of them especially for us, third world people – personal fears, social fears, local fears, national fears and of course global fears – of war and climate change and what have you. To think of all these is to lose one’s peace of mind. Surely, an affirmation of a poet’s cry that in this world “to think is to be full of sorrows and leaden eyed despair.” Therefore, to avoid fear, one should not think at all? Alcohol drowns keenness of thought, hence alcohol could be a balm to fears? Of course it never is. In fact, it could only aggravate fears. What then is one’s recourse?

As in all problems in life the safe recourse is faith. Faith frees the mind from fears. The stronger the faith, the stronger is one’s capacity to vanquish fears. Peace I leave with you, my peace I leave unto you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. These were Jesus’ words of comfort before he went up to heaven. Jesus knows the myriad troubles that beset every soul, troubles involving one’s own worldly existence, troubles affecting his struggle to uphold his divine destiny. That’s why at one time when a storm buffeted the boat Jesus and his disciples had boarded in, he rebuked the latter by saying, Why are you afraid? Don’t you know that you are with me?

 Indeed the Bible is full of comforting words against being afraid. In one of the psalms, the psalmist say, “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me…” Consoling words, indeed, especially in the midst of worries about killer floods and tsunamis, of destructive quakes and fire. But as always, the protective arms of God extend only to those who believe. For to believe is to trust in the Lord and God loves to be trusted. The unbeliever does not trust in the Lord, hence he keeps himself outside the range of his protection.

To give flesh to these abstractions, allow me to recount my own experience. Towards my early months of schooling as a grade five pupil, my parents told me that they might not be able to send me to high school. There being no free high school then, these words kept me worrying about my future. I then started praying for divine intervention. Our house being near the church, I would sneak in there for an early mass every day before going to school. Quite naturally, I started getting serious with my lessons and my grades began to improve. At year end, I was declared number one academically, and this happened too a year later in grade six. As a result I was granted a scholarship in a private university and this, also through prayers, enabled me to finished college eight years later.

Fearful of the days ahead? Go on, savor in your fears, but hold firmly to the hands of the Lord.

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