The Fallacy of Fear

The Fallacy of Fear

Understanding the Hidden Tax of Tomorrow

Personal reflections from a fellow traveler.  No AA approved literature.  Shared in the spirit of Experience, Strength, and Hope.

Fear is expensive.

Not because what we dread always happens —
but because we pay for it long before it ever does.

I’ve paid for conversations that never occurred.
For betrayals that never came.
For futures my mind constructed with unsettling precision.

Fear convinces me that anticipation is preparation.
That worry is wisdom.
That control is caution.

But most of the time, it’s imagination pretending to be insight.

Recovery exposed this. Step One taught me I was powerless — not just over alcohol, but over outcomes. Step Three invited me to stop financing fiction and place tomorrow in God’s hands instead of my own.

Fear demands prepayment, but Faith allows trust.

The inventory showed how many resentments were rooted in fear. Prayer and meditation revealed something else: tomorrow has no authority over today unless I surrender it.

Fear doesn’t usually steal the future.

It steals the present.
Peace.
Clarity.
Connection.

That is its hidden tax.

I still feel fear. But I am learning not to fund it. I am learning to let tomorrow arrive on its own schedule.  It does not require advance payment.

“The man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.” -Unknown

 

Where in my life can I stop paying the hidden tax on fear?