“Anger is the last refuge of fear…..”

       

I read that in a book entitled “Careless In Red” by Elizabeth George.  Good book by the way, but this isn’t a book review.

       

That phrase stuck in my head and rattled around for days after reading it.  Obviously it is still rattling around in there or I wouldn’t be writing this, but needless to say, I thought quite a bit about it.  You see.  I’m an angry man.

       

A lot of people are angry, especially men.  Since I am a man, I’ll refer to men.  It’s not that women aren’t angry; I just don’t understand women.  Someone else cam talk about women’s anger.

       

Actually I’m not really writing about anger either, I’m writing about fear.

       

We all have fear.  All of us are afraid of something.  You are afraid of something.  If you don’t think you are afraid of something, you haven’t lived long enough.  Eventually you will find something(s) you’re afraid of.  When you do, come back here and leave a comment “you were right.”

It’ll make me feel important.

       

Some people act like they don’t have any fear.  They don’t seem like they’re afraid of anything.  They’ll  ski off a cliff, naked, wrestling a lion, and flipping God the bird on a dare.  

But I bet they are afraid of fear.

If you told them they were afraid of something, they’d probably deny it and get angry.  Hmmm….why would they get angry?  Probably because they don’t want people to think they’re skeert?

       

Winston Churchill (old dead white guy who was probably angry) said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” or words to that effect.  There are plenty of people who fear fear.  They think fear is the sign of cowardice.  

It isn’t, but they think it is.  

So people are afraid of being afraid.   They don’t want to be a coward.

Actually they probably don’t care if they’re a coward, they just don’t want people to think they’re a coward.

       

You see how complicated it can get?

My fears run a bit more broadly than that, and are nowhere near as complex.  I’m just plain afraid of some things.  Of course I am afraid of fear too.   Why am I afraid of fear?

Because:

Fear is what gets your ass kicked in a fight.

Fear leads to passively accepting things which should be viewed as unacceptable.

Fear leads to lying, cheating, and other detestable practices.

Fear sucks.

Fear can lead to cowardice, but fear isn’t cowardice.  I can be afraid and still ski off the cliff, naked, wrestling a lion and flipping God the bird.  Of course that would be fracking stupid.  If you didn’t do that, you wouldn’t be a coward, you’d just be smarter than the average rock.

The point is, I can still act even when I am afraid.

Cowardice is being afraid of fear, or appearance of fear.  Cowardice is debilitating fear.  

Debilitating fear is what Churchill was talking about.  We got to have a righteous fear of debilitating fear.  Avoid the fear of fear.

A guy named Charles Spurgeon (yeah, like the fish) said, “Above all else, avoid cowardice because it makes liars of men.”  Smart dude.  You might want to Google the guy.  

So I think what he meant is, above all else, avoid cowardice, because it makes liars of men.  Wait! That IS what he said.  Like I said, smart dude.

I’ve been a liar in a lot of ways.  I’ve acted a lie, told lies, even lied about lies.  Because I didn’t understand that fear should be feared.  So I gave in to fear and became a coward.  

Then I got angry for being a coward.

You see how complicated it gets?

I get angry because, it disguises my fear and gives me power.  If I’m angry, I don’t stop to think about being afraid.  I can bury the fear in a few layers of kick-your-teeth-in anger.  But it’s still down there.  Like termites eating at the support beam.  It’ll crash, and the fear will be exposed.  

Because it’s in there.

Don’t let anyone try to fool you.  Angry people are scared people.  That’s a fact.  Think about it.  Yes you can.  Think about it.

So, I’m afraid anger really the last refuge of fear.