On Fear

It Need Not Lead to the Dark Side if You Don't Want it To

The best advice I’ve ever gotten was taken from a piece of Pachad Yitzchak, a piece (Sukkos 19) I actually discussed on the Podchad Yitzchak podcast, with R. Aryeh Klapper. In the midst of a discussion of religious fear (Fear of sin, heaven, god, etc), he gives an example of a rabbi afraid to decide weighty issues of Jewish law, until another rabbi tells him “who would you rather answer those questions, someone who isn’t afraid?”

Let’s analyze what’s going on here as advice (especially considering it may well have originated in that form.) We tend to view fear as a negative, something that must be overcome in order for me to accomplish what I need to do. Fear is an obstacle, and you need to get past the obstacle, and only then will you accomplish. This leads to either of two situations, both of them bad. In one situation, I cannot accomplish anything due to the presence of fear. I want to start down the road, but fear is in the way, so I do not start walking. Why should I go down that road, if there are obstacles?

But just as bad is a situation where I see no obstacles at all, where I am totally fearless. Why? Because sometimes there are obstacles you should very well be aware of. It is not courage to walk boldly off of a cliff, ignoring warning signs that a cliff is approaching, and it doesn’t do you any good. To go back to the original line, deciding weighty matters of Jewish law with no fear at all will mean making thoughtless and careless decisions that hurt people and transgress divine law.

It is not good to be fearless, because there are things out there that you should be afraid of, limits that you should be afraid to go past, boundaries that ought not to be crossed. The presence of fear in your decision-making is not something to be weeded out, it is what keeps your feet on the ground and your eyes up ahead. If you find yourself feeling fear when approaching weighty decisions, it is not something to be disregarded but something that ought to play a role in such weighty decisions. When you find yourself feeling no such fear, that’s when you should be really worried, because nobody who is unafraid of the consequences of their decisions, who sees no boundaries or limits that might apply to them, ought to be making decisions.