Editorial June 22, 1987 Issue

No "good reasons" for fear

Allison W. Phinney, Jr.

Well, how about being on a narrow steel beam with nothing to hold on to, fifty or sixty stories above the ground? Wouldn't that be a good reason for fear?

It surely might seem so to you or me! But I recall watching some ironworkers putting up a new building in Boston a few years ago. As the girders went up, you couldn't help being in awe of what those tiny figures were accomplishing up there on the narrow beams. Even on a blustery winter day they would move around with no rope, no net, nothing to hold on to, and with nothing except empty air between them and the ground below. And they were walking, not just inching along.

How often our fears come with "good reasons" attached. But we can begin to learn, as in this example of the ironworkers, that fear isn't actually the simple product of the situation being faced. It arises because we participate in agreeing that the circumstances constitute a good reason for feeling fear.

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