A Q&A with Harold S. Kushner
Question: You have written about so many of the issues that
every one of us will confront at some point in life--loss, grief,
disappointment. When and why did you decide to write a book about
fear?
Harold S. Kushner: For some time, I’ve been meeting people who
are less happy than they have a right to be because they are
afraid--afraid of losing their job, afraid that something will
happen to someone in their family, afraid of another terrorist
attack. You can’t enjoy life when you feel that way. Now, I can’t
guarantee that none of those things will happen, but I think I
can show people how to live with those concerns but not let them
drain the joy from their lives.
Question: You began working on this book before the events of
this past year and the collapse of the economy. Certainly these
are times in which people are more fearful than ever and face new
challenges in their daily lives. Do you think the nature of our
fears has changed, or that these times just magnify the fears we
already had?
Harold S. Kushner: More than anything else, we’ve always worried
about something terrible happening to us or to our world. What
has changed is, with improved communication and 24-hour news
channels, we hear about more of such things happening somewhere,
not necessarily anywhere close to us, and we worry. As one doctor
put it, "anthrax is not contagious, but fear of anthrax is." And
of course with what has been happening with the economy, we have
more things to worry about. People are worried about losing their
jobs, losing their homes, losing their retirement savings. I
worry that there is a tipping point beyond which we find
ourselves worried about so many things that it virtually changes
our personality. We become fearful, timid, helpless people,
afraid of trying anything or doing anything at all.
Question: Your book is titled Conquering Fear--not accepting
fear or overcoming fear or coping with fear. Why did you choose
that very powerful word for your title?
Harold S. Kushner: If it were easy to lower our level of
apprehension, we would all do it. But I don’t think it should be
our goal to eliminate fear. There are things we should be afraid
of--crime, dangers to our , people looking to cheat us. It
would be foolhardy to go through life so confident that nothing
bad will ever happen to us because we’re good people. But there
is a crucial difference between concern which is good and fear
which can be debilitating. We don’t want to let our lives be
defined by the things we’re afraid of. I remember the Israeli man
whose daughter was badly burned in a terrorist incident, saying
"there are worse things in life than dying, and one of them is to
live every minute of your life in fear." Our goal should be to
make fear our servant rather than our master.
Question: You write, "I resolve not to let my fears of what
might happen prevent me from anticipating with pleasure what I
hope will happen." How are fear and hope linked?
Harold S. Kushner: Both are ways of anticipating a future that
hasn’t happened yet. One of them, fear, anticipates the worst
happening; the other, hope, looks forward to something better. It
seems to me that anticipating the worst is likely to paralyze and
discourage us, leaving us feeling helpless, while envisioning the
more favorable outcome may give us the psychological energy to do
the things we have to do to bring it about.
Question: We know what fear does to us emotionally, but what
does fear do to us physically?
Harold S. Kushner: What affects us emotionally will inevitably
have physical consequences. Stress makes us tense. We don’t
as well, we feel tired and we are tempted to overeat. We focus
more on ourselves and distance ourselves from other people. We
are prone to misunderstand other people’s words and actions.
Question: What made you decide to devote a chapter to fear of
rapid change?
Harold S. Kushner: As a man in late middle age, I feel the
effect of having been left behind by the rate of change in
society every time I have to ask my grandson to program my cell
phone or straighten out my computer. I’m not embarrassed to ask
for help, but I would be more comfortable in a world where
knowledge flowed from older people to younger ones rather than
the other way around. I’m also concerned that the sense of
disorientation so many people feel at the unprecedented rate of
change is feeding into the rise of intolerance and religious
fundamentalism and resistance to necessary changes in religion
and society.