Fear is a terrible thing. Fear is corrosive, eating away our confidence, sapping our creativity, tunnelling under our motivation. Fear alienates us from contentment, and stands in the way of true happiness. The power of pathological fear is so great as to prevent sufferers putting one foot in front of the other. The writer Franz Kafka, who spent his life in fear of his own father, wrote him a letter saying ‘I could not tell you I was afraid of you, precisely because of that self-same fear’.
    With the recent threat to air travel, we are once again gripped by fear, by events imposed on our lives by malevolence. No point here in talking about factions – who did this, who opposed that, what are the policies of the nations of the world in regard to events in the middle east or elsewhere.
    This isn’t about global events; it’s about our everyday existence, about how we move forward in our lives. And we’re not short of pessimists. The poet Adam Gibbs has written:

Villagers scurry like ants at
the howl of the chimera
and the griffon’s call.
Nowhere to hide from the hydra,
the centaur, or the dragon
Man-eaters one and all.

One man alone will stand his ground and, like a mountain, bars the way. The stance, the face, the attitude all say he fears nothing but fear. ... We visited his grave today.

This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts.

The dangers associated with rashness and reticence are such that to avoid one is to increase the risk of the other ... the symbol provides instructions on the attitude appropriate for one about to undertake interior work ... the need for this sort of balance between action and stillness will characterise the new mason’s entire career ... and thus a steady, purposeful, gentle perseverance is required.