Harold S. Kushner. Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World. New York: Alfred F. Knopf, 2009. 192 pages.
Humans are the only animals that fear the future–a consequence of the gift of foresight. Harold Kushner, best known as the author of WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE, takes on fear in this quick but thoughtful book.
The essence of CONQUERING FEAR can be found in words Rabbi Kushner shared with an ill congregant: “God’s job is not to make sick people healthy. That’s the doctor’s job. God’s job is to make sick people brave.” (18) The book reminds us that while bad things may lie ahead, being crippled by fear in the present will only make them worse. Indeed, throughout the book Kushner reminds us that God himself repeatedly urges people not to be afraid. Kushner’s deity is not about fire and brimstone but overcoming fear.
The book includes chapters on some of the things that Americans fear most these days: terrorism, natural disasters, unemployment, lovelessness, aging, and finally the ultimate terror: death. While CONQUERING FEAR will be a good read for any age group, it is profoundly an older man’s book, as Kushner writes about aging and death with a purpose that a younger author, no matter how empathetic, couldn’t achieve. What he has to say is both comforting and inspiring. In a nutshell, it is that “Your life is the story; death is only punctuation.” (157) Those words aren’t just a balm for the ailing; they are a summons to life for the healthy.
Speaking of this being an old man’s book tempered by his life’s experience, I was particularly taken by Kushner’s meditation on Ecclesiastes. As a young man, he loved it because it spoke to the hypocrisy he saw everywhere. At thirty-five, he read it as the musings of a man worried that everything he’d worked for would disappear. At fifty, after his father’s death, he understood the book as an old man’s fear of death: he’s not worried that his work will be gone, but that he will be gone. It’s this kind of nuanced analysis that makes CONQUERING FEAR such a good read. It feels like the distillation of decades of serious thought about human struggle.
At a time when fear surrounds us, this book will both sooth and stir you.