-Lucinda J. Garthwaite, ILI Director

In these weeks before a major U.S. election, this seems as good a moment as any to write about fear.

Once in a while I engage in a quiet experiment, responding with sincere respect and curiosity, and offering a different perspective, to a social media post that represents a very different political position than my own, from someone I don't know. Almost always, nothing at all happens. Earlier this week, the person to whom I’d responded wrote back, “I hope you’ve done your homework, because if [your preferred candidate] is elected, I’m afraid we will lose all of our freedoms and our country will be in ruins.” She added three crying-face emojis.

I replied, “I see your fear and respect it. I fear the same things if [your preferred candidate] is elected. I hope we’re both wrong.” She clicked the heart-emoji next to my comment.

Some would call her uninformed, ridiculous, and worse. I could have told that woman she was wrong, that my guy, though not perfect, is the far better bet for freedom and the country.

I believe that to be true, but she was honest with me; she is genuinely, tearfully afraid.

Fear cannot be denied. Fear, one of my most trusted teachers has often reminded me, can only hear affirmation, reassurance and information about how to get out of harm’s way. That same teacher suggested recently that fear is also the most difficult human emotion to bear, so we’ll do almost anything to calm or banish it, including projecting fear onto others as hate.

Attacking the fearful strengthens fear. Strengthening fear easily hardens into hate, hate too often extends to violence, and reinforces systemic injustice. So it stands to reason that attacking fearful people is antithetical to liberatory change. As a friend of mine, a long-time labor organizer, said to me once, it’s just bad strategy.

So what are we to do with our profoundly disparate fears? Many teachers, from many movements and traditions, suggest we start with simply acknowledging fears, those of others as well as our own. In the case of my momentary social media companion, that got me a heart emoji, and that’s a start.

That could have been a sweet end to this message, but serious work for liberatory change can only rest in a heart emoji for about a second. We’ve got to learn to recognize and disarm fear. Perception of harm is a belief, and that belief shields the fearful. We've got to learn how to dismantle beliefs without strengthening fear.

Meanwhile, we can commit to not making things worse. In these next few weeks, of course we ought to encourage people to vote. We ought to challenge ideas, policies and systems, and I invite you to consider (or consider again) your response to others’ fear, even their hate-filled projections of it. Affirm fear when it says it's fear, and avoid attacking the intelligence or humanity of the fearful. That's not always easy, and it's not always satisfying, but it's a critical effort for change.