Mindfulness or Fearfulness

“Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.”
-William Shakespeare

There is a great deal of viciousness & dis-ease in the United States of America: poverty; mental disorders; drug addiction; bigotry; compulsive obsessive consumption of sex, violence, food, celebrity, television, etc etc etc. But above all, there is a pervasive FEARFULNESS that lurks at every level & in every corner of society.

I am not someone who believes that human beings begin life in a pathology. I am not someone who blames social circumstance. I believe in the import not only of learning accountability but taking responsibility.

Nonetheless, when you live in a nation which has so given itself over to the twin aspects of sloth–apathetic escapism and self-promoting busyness–there is no weapon among the half billion we possess nor any law among the millions we have passed that will spare our immortal souls.

For both of these “solutions” seek after keeping the peace, but peace (Lat. PAX) means “to drive into the ground and break off”. “Peace” is an aspect of war and itself is a violence. “Keeping the Peace” hides a broader notion: obtaining that tranquility which allows us to eschew the violent struggle to merely survive and to engage in the loving struggle to openly flourish.

Violent struggle en lieu of loving struggle solicits suffering, harbors hatred, aggrandizes anger, and feeds fear.

The questions remain, Why do we continue to choose the dark path of “Keeping the Peace” in FEARFULNESS? Why do we not decide for the well lit road of MINDFUL tranquility?