Fear Clouds Our Ability to Think Straight
I’ve written about fear a lot, however, when a magnitude 8.8 earthquake hits somewhere in the world, in this case in Chile, it brings up some fear in me. You see, I live in California. My home sits between two fault lines.
The earthquake in Haiti brought up some fear, too. So do the little tremblors we have here all the time.
But I don’t allow myself to dwell on fear. Not ever. No how.
Fear clouds our ability to think straight. It doesn’t let us respond rationally. Instead we just react out of fear. Yes…there’s a difference between reacting and responding. We respond after thinking something through. We react when emotions or instinct tell us what to do, and sometimes this reaction isn’t rational.
So, today, I’m not focusing a lot on fear. I’m focusing on other things. I want to think straight.
(Plus, those of you know me know that I believe our thoughts have a creative ability. Therefore, I don’t want to dwell on my fears lest I create them.)
I’ve written a lot about Rebbe Nachman’s teaching about fear. Today I wrote about them again in my Examiner column. You might enjoy reading my thoughts. I didn’t want to repeat them all here, although that column inspired this blog post.
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