Fear

Outside it is snowing like mad.  I woke to sunshine and puffy clouds around the Peak this morning, and returned from work in the early afternoon dodging traffic accidents and budding snow drifts.

This is the first real snow for Terryll and I in our house, and I can hear it creaking and flexing with the wind.  We spent most of the day here, working from home, lounging around and cooking dinner together. We have been busying ourselves with little chores that would have been drudgery on a warm spring day, but now feel comforting and pleasantly industrious.

I just got back from taking the dog for a walk; an act that I am sure puzzled some neighbors.  No doubt those whose homes border the greenway wondered why their dogs were going berzerk at their back doors. What could they be barking at out there?

This has been a cozy day where the world around me had to give in and accept that nature will have its way, deadlines and schedules be damned. Everyone on the Frontrange was sent scuttling for cover as the storm rolled in, clearning the field of us and moving on victoriously.  There is a comforting silence around the house, and the sometimes alarming events of the world seem very far away.  Terryll is playing the piano downstairs, and the dog is alseep next to my chair on my cast-off, too-warm-for-indoors socks.

As we were cooking dinner, a poem came to mind. (It was another reminder of the regret that I could not have seen this time of life coming and memorized more poetry when I was a child; storing it away for a day when it would be meaningful… ) It is a short verse, now nearly a hundred years old.

Storm Fear
By Robert Frost • From A Boy’s Will, 1915

When the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
The lowest chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
‘Come out! Come out!’—
It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,—
How drifts are piled,
Dooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether ’tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided.

The first time I read this poem I thought it was depressing.  After a couple times through, however, I realized that Frost is not talking about the irrational panic that creeps into us from evil things; that senseless dread that causes our will and our intellect to fly before it.

If it is really a fear he  is talking about, I think it is the honest, curious questioning a man sometimes has when the weight of reality strikes him as being intimidating.  Do I have what it takes to see this through? I think this is the only true fear, and the only one (save that of God) that is sanctioned by the Almighty.  It is not a fear that makes us shrink back, but one that makes us keenly aware of what is at stake in our decisions.  It is a fear that does not end in “I can’t.” but in “I must.”

Frost may have been inspired by a storm swirling over his New England farm, but his final question seems particularly salient to me today.  Economic woes mount, truth and objectivity in our government and media seem embattled  and trust in our institutions and our fellow man sometimes seem like a foolish hope.  As a country, a century of curious, mounting apprehension that our lives, freedom, environment, values or prosperity are in danger (from within or without) seems to be swelling up into a great wave of fear in so many hearts. Many in America feel increasingly isolated, exposed and vulnerable. It is a fear that says “no one is coming to help us.”  A sentiment you would likely feel in a cold farm house watching yourself get slowly snowed in.

So, for me the question is, am I giving in to that weakening dread, or asking myself an emboldening question. Do I go to bed tonight wondering if tomorrow will be the day that some unthinkable evil will finally break forth upon us or do I harbor a different sentiment…

And my heart owns a doubt
Whether ’tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided.