The warning light that is fear
I read a review of an old episode of The Leftovers today. Of the many things that struck me in the piece, what stood out most was this paragraph:
Ripley is the only human being to get on her ship at the end of “Alien”; She is alone, but the ghosts come with her. (And that movie is one of my all-time favorites not for showing that Ripley was brave, but for showing that she was afraid, so very afraid. And she did it all anyway.)
Of course, Ripley was brave. The flaw in this analysis is the confusion of bravery with a lack of fear. But to be brave is to overcome one’s fear—and fear is not intrinsically bad.
I've been accused of bravery at times when I was not afraid. Sometimes for something as banal as buying a woman I liked flowers. Another time because, after seeing a dog run over by a car and killed, I dragged it off the quiet road so it would not be subject to further indignity in death.
In one of the many times of recklessness on a bicycle (and one of the few on a public road), I cycled between a bus and a flat-bed truck. As we turned a corner, the bus and truck moved closer to one another until there was less than a foot separating me from both of them. I was surprised, in real danger, and totally without fear. I remember telling some friends about this, and being accused of boasting about my own bravery, but my intent was instead to tell them of my worry that there was something fundamentally broken about my fear response.
We treat fear as this thing more than it is. We berate ourselves for feeling it. But fear is a valuable thing. Ripley was right to be frightened of the xenomorph. Imagine how invincible or delusional she would have to be to not fear a creature that could kill her in an instant.
In our own lives we have much to be fearful of. A car might knock us down as we cross the road. A live wire might fry us if we touch it. A hot pot might scald us. Fear can serve as a useful tool, an instinctual evaluation of one’s circumstances that forces our consciousness to further evaluate our next course of action.
And if you think of it, what is there to praise if bravery is simply the absence of fear? You might as well praise someone for having a nose as for being fearless. It is no accomplishment. But bravery is to take that fear and to say “you will not stop me!”
When I see this young girl stand up and plead her case for her own humanity, and I see her fear but still she speaks, there she shows her clear and commendable bravery.
Sometimes the warning light can malfunction, and we can be afraid of things that are of no threat. But that does not eliminate either the value of fear generally or the bravery of overcoming those specific fears. We give each other such a hard time for being afraid that we miss the countless acts of bravery we and others achieve in spite of it.