Are you living fearlessly in the midst of chaos?
In the past, I’ve written about how the Strength card beautifully illustrates the Hindu principle of Ahimsa—the practice of harmlessness. (See The Strength Card, Ahimsa, and Your Magical Anti Shit-Head Cloak.)
In its simplest form, Ahimsa teaches that when our own hearts are truly peaceful, we cease moving through the world as agents of violence. The remarkable claim of the tradition is that this inner harmlessness also becomes a kind of protection. Peace itself becomes a shield.
Today, though, I’d like to explore another aspect of the Strength card.
Fearlessness.
Look carefully at Pamela Colman Smith’s illustration. The woman doesn’t overpower the lion. She doesn’t wrestle it into submission. She approaches it with gentleness, compassion…and with a complete absence of panic.
The great lion becomes, almost unbelievably, a house cat waiting to have its ears scratched. She’s fearless and so the lion is fearless.
What Is Fear?
Fear is not a character flaw.
It’s part of being human.
Deep within the brain are networks whose job is to constantly scan our surroundings for danger. When they detect a threat, our limbic system responds instantly. Our heart rate rises. Adrenaline and cortisol flood our bloodstream. Muscles tighten. Attention narrows.
Fight.
Flight.
Survive.
It’s a marvelous system. Our ancestors lived because of it.
Thank you, nervous system – good job!
The problem isn’t fear itself.
The problem is when we never leave that state.
Modern life has a remarkable ability to keep the alarm bells ringing. Financial worries. Health concerns. Relationships. Politics. Endless news feeds. Before long we’re swimming in stress hormones that were designed for emergencies, not for everyday living.
Eventually the body grows exhausted.
And so does the spirit.
The Western Idea of Fearlessness
Our culture loves fearless heroes.
Movies are filled with square-jawed action stars who stare down impossible odds without breaking a sweat. They defeat violence by becoming even better at violence.
It’s entertaining.
But it’s also a fantasy.
That kind of fearlessness isn’t based on peace.
It’s based on becoming more dangerous than whatever threatens us.
The mystic quietly disappears and the sociopath takes center stage.
The message becomes: “You don’t have to be afraid if everyone else is afraid of you.”
That’s a strange definition of courage.
Nothing has actually become peaceful.
We’ve simply dumped more adrenaline into the system and called it victory.
A Peaceful Heart
Whenever we declare war on fear, something curious happens.
We activate the limbic system that we’re trying to quiet. When we use phrases like, “battling our fear,” we immediately wake up our fear center. Battle? Did someone say battle?
Why do we battle something?
Because we’re afraid of it.
So we create a strange paradox.
We try to conquer fear…with fear.
The Strength card offers another path.
It doesn’t ask us to destroy fear.
It asks us to stop feeding it.
That doesn’t mean we ignore danger. It doesn’t mean we stop listening when our instincts warn us that something is genuinely wrong. We don’t need to take up nude skydiving just to prove we’re fearless.
We notice fear.
We thank it for trying to protect us.
And then we continue walking with a peaceful heart.
The lion is still a lion.
But we are no longer terrified by its roar.
Quiet Fidelity
When I think about genuine fearlessness, I don’t think about action heroes.
I think about the husband who spends years caring for his wife through cancer, quietly getting the wheelchair ready every morning.
I think about the single mother working two jobs so her children have food on the table and shoes on their feet.
I think about the husband or wife who continues showing kindness and faithfulness long after romance has faded into ordinary life.
Henry David Thoreau famously wrote that “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Perhaps.
But I think he overlooked something.
Most people live lives of quiet fidelity.
They get up every morning.
They show up.
Even when hope seems unreasonable, they continue hoping.
Even when depression whispers that nothing matters, they keep looking for beauty.
Even when illness or grief comes to visit, they continue choosing life.
That, to me, is what the Strength card is really about.
For most of us, fearlessness doesn’t mean living without fear. Perhaps the rare saint—or the rare sociopath—can make that claim.
The rest of us simply learn not to let fear become the author of our lives.
We acknowledge it.
We thank it.
We refuse to let it drive.
And little by little, we discover that the lion was never conquered.
Only our relationship to it changed.
As Joseph Campbell so beautifully observed:
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
Perhaps the greatest treasure isn’t on the other side of fear.
Perhaps it is the peaceful heart we discover while walking through it.
Just the Tarot 