Miriam,
Thank you for the thought-provoking article. I appreciate it.

One thought hit me as I read the article. We live in a time/society, wherein there is no shortage of entities selling fear to us, perhaps in ways we don't even recognize anymore. This political season, BOTH parties are selling fear, to the point where their campaigns aren't even about what their candidate will bring to the office, as much as why we should fear other candidate. 

Some years ago, the mantra for Madison Avenue was "sex sells." The addendum to that is "so does fear." So TV commercials often sell fear, sometimes overtly (home security systems, pharma ads...), sometimes less overt, but still based on fear. It's hard to ignore this stuff: it's everywhere.

In today's society, I'm not sure we can escape this kind of messaging, but perhaps we can try to become more aware of it when we see it, and use that awareness to not give in to fear. Not much, but perhaps a start, a first step. An empowering step...