While in Iraq in 2003, on our operating bases protected by concertina wire and manned defensive positions, uncertainty, stress, and anxiety would increase when I saw or heard explosions and firefights in the not-too-distant villages. Fear would follow and cause more stress and anxiety. When I was “outside the wire,” however, I was far less fearful.
In fact, I was almost fearless when faced with real threats of death. My fear was at its height when sitting on our compound, inside the wire, because I didn’t know what was going on. Going outside the wire helped me to know what was really happening and kept any resulting stress or anxiety at or below normal levels. Simply knowing reality constrained my fear that had been triggered by a distorted view of reality – something I call “fictional fear.”
In today’s America, fear has trapped many people inside echo chambers and other similar spaces. We cling to a false sense of security as the perceived safety inside these “likeminded” spaces hurts us over the long term and destabilizes our country. But oftentimes, this fear is fictional.
Fear itself is a very real and powerful emotion, but fictional fear occurs when we allow fear to trap us in a distorted view of reality. This is dangerous, because fear paralyzes people. It destabilizes nations. It manipulates us. If we allow fictional fear to win, then we will all lose. Hope – perhaps the only emotion stronger than fear – can help us escape fictional fear. But we must deliberately choose to go and find that hope.
Fictional fear is stunting our individual growth and hindering our pursuit of a more perfect union. If we choose to remain inside our respective echo chambers and don’t engage with others in our communities, then fear will consume us and perpetuate our nation’s divisions at a potentially existential cost. Fortunately, we own the solution to fictional fear: We must get outside our comfort zones. It’s possible.
Back in February, with icy road conditions predicted for the next morning’s commute, the possible threat to safety left me naturally anxious and stressed. Of course, there was nothing I could do about the weather, so I told myself to rest to be ready for whatever the next day would bring. When I awoke that morning, my stress and anxiety levels rose until I went outside and inspected the roads for myself. There had been zero precipitation overnight. My stress had been silly, though natural. The fear I felt had been fictional.
Reflecting on my combat experiences while driving to work that February morning led me to think about the current health of our American experiment. Many Americans sit in the comfort of their homes – their operating base “inside the wire” – and get their information about our world from relatively narrow sources. They see and hear “reports” from “outside their wire.” Just like me in Iraq, the uncertainty about what appears to be happening in the world around them increases their stress and anxiety.
It’s natural that fear – our survival response to great uncertainty – can take over. From the safety of our homes, we begin to imagine a more dangerous and treacherous world that threatens our survival and way of life. We then isolate ourselves by engaging in smaller circles of people and remaining “inside the wire” of perceived safety. The fear we feel is real, but it is based on fictional depictions of reality.
Staying “inside the wire” perpetuates a cycle of stress, anxiety, and fear that destabilizes us as individuals. We constrain our experiences. We alter our interactions. We shirk responsibilities as citizens. We fail to know and love our neighbors. All because fictional fear has trapped us in a distorted reality.
To escape the trap of fictional fear, we must “go outside the wire.” If uncertainty leads to fear, then we must reduce uncertainty in our lives. Doing so requires some deliberate choices and work. For me, whether it was inspecting road conditions that February morning or going on patrol in Iraq, going from “not knowing” to “knowing” – and thus reducing my uncertainty – required me to be a little uncomfortable. That bit of discomfort created in me a sense of hope. Hope that the roads would be safe and hope that Iraq was not as dangerous as I had imagined. Hope is so much more powerful than fear.
In today’s America, fictional fear has trapped many people across political and social spectrums “inside their wires” of perceived safety. We fear others who we perceive to be different than us. We fear that which we choose not to understand. If we never “go outside the wire,” then we will never move from “not knowing” to “knowing,” and we will let uncertainty, stress, anxiety, and fear ultimately defeat us. When fear takes hold, our behaviors and interactions with others change, and we become more susceptible to manipulation, which perpetuates a vicious cycle.
I challenge all Americans to prevent fear from consuming us. As I learned by inspecting the road conditions on that morning commute, it’s relatively simple. Go outside our wire. Go engage in our neighborhoods, our communities, and our country. Go meet the people around us. Go see what is really happening in our world. Go defeat fear with the hope that will emerge from engaging with others.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was right when he proclaimed in 1933 that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Especially when that fear is fictional.
