Fear is the Imagination Killer

As a teenager in junior highschool, I remember seeing a book on my mother's night stand--"Dune" by Frank Herbert. A number of years passed before that incredible book came back to me to read and wonder upon. There is a phrase that stays with me and regularly challenges my approach to life. It is an aphorism given by a teacher to a student, in this case the young prince as he is being trained by a master warrior. "Fear is the mind killer," the old teacher says to the prince.

Not long after reading this novel, I began to go on adventures. For much of my life I have done interesting and often terrifying things. Early in my twenties I took a bus to Steamboat Springs, Colorado and then hitchhiked to the little mountain town of Walden where I worked in oil exploration--from a helicopter. A couple of years later I drove to Colorado with little money and spent a winter as a ski bum (I didn't know how to ski and had no friends to greet me). I joined the military where I worked as aircrew on AWACS in Saudi Arabia, Iceland, England, and all over the US. I went to New York and became a stock broker with no prior experience (yes, I lost money--mine and others). I even went to Alaska as a commercial fisherman and faced my primal fear of the ocean as I fished salmon and crab! For the last 17 years I have been a fireman in a major city and have had untold close encounters, tragedies, and soul shaking experiences. And, most recently, I put myself through graduate school where I had to profoundly engage with myself, my world view, and my deepest sense of identity with the intention of bringing my 'self' forward into my academic efforts.

The notion that fear is limited to a momentary confrontation with an aggressive force that thrusts us body and soul into a primal state is limited at best. When we consider our path through life and the oppressive nature that the world can often exhibit, it becomes apparent that fear is an experience that creates an ongoing condition that subtly affects every aspect of our daily life. Often low grade and without adrenalin pumping immediacy, fear occupies a distinct and pressing presence in the psyche--regardless of wealth, beauty, social standing, youth, or self-confidence. The world is often a frightening place and the degree to which fear influences us makes it more so.

Frank Herbert's aphorism, "Fear is the Mind Killer" is accurate to a point. Fear shuts the body and mind down, driving the critical ego into a primal place where one is instantly and momentously distilled down to core needs and sensibilities. The experiences in my own life bear this out. Facing fire in a closed building with no apparent way out has taught me that the animal-body has the ability to take over, regardless of what the mind says. In one sense, fear provides the physical impetus to survive immediate danger by a whole host of pre-programmed or instinctual responses--freeze, fight, run, scream, posture, shrink, etc. Fear has its place.

However, left unattended there is more to it than that. Without some understanding of events, resolution, and consequence, fear becomes "the Imagination Killer." In this context fear is an ongoing affliction that results from living a life that is assaulted, on a daily basis, with images of pain, suffering, terror, and poverty. We are distressed every day from a lack of imagination (or more accurately, the lack of an exercised imagination). There seems to be an absence of permission to have and employ our deepest imagination. Here is where we have an opportunity to step up, smell the coffee, and put our hearts to work, and create a different reality for ourselves--something else, something more. This is the great challenge of our age.