From Fear to Fidelity: How to Live Well in the Return of Normal History

Photo by Simon Hurry on Unsplash

Yesterday I asked my subscribers a simple question: What are you most worried about in your life right now?

The responses came quickly, and they were gut-wrenching in their honesty:

That my kids and grandkids will live in a dictatorship.

The gnawing gap between the world I know we need to build and the time I lose every day working a gas station job just to survive…

In this time of extreme change globally, my business model surviving.

That my friends or myself will be injured or killed at upcoming mass protests.

Basic human rights for myself and my family… Project 2025 terrifies me…

Grieving my friends and my republic.

My parents health and raising kids during a dictatorship.

Erosion of democracy worldwide, even as we slide into ecological crises.

All of the above. And more.

These aren’t abstract political anxieties. These are embodied fears about survival, dignity, and possibility—fear for children’s futures, fear of physical violence, fear of economic collapse, fear of neighbors turned informants. Fear so total that articulation itself becomes inadequate—”all of the above, and more.”

And reading through them, I felt something I need to share with you: these fears are rational—every single one of them. Federal agents are conducting warrantless mass detentions of American citizens. ICE is being deployed as cultural enforcement at the Super Bowl. The President’s adviser just called judicial review of executive power “insurrection.” Your fear isn’t neurosis—it’s pattern recognition. You’re seeing clearly, and what you’re seeing should frighten anyone who understands what constitutional democracy requires to survive.

But I also need to tell you something else, something that might sound strange given everything I’ve written about the collapse we’re witnessing: we are not unique in history.

The Blessed Generation

We have been blessed. Most of civilized history has been a much scarier world on a day-to-day basis than what we experience now. We are all contending with a sense of loss—especially those who came of age in the 1990s, when America seemed confident and the future looked like it would be obviously better than the past.

People sometimes refer to this as the “End of History” moment, referencing Francis Fukuyama’s famous book. He takes too much flak for that thesis. Fukuyama wasn’t predicting that nothing would ever happen again—he was observing something real: liberal democracy had triumphed over its ideological competitors. The Soviet Union had collapsed. Market economies had proven superior to command economies. Democratic governance had demonstrated its advantage over authoritarian alternatives. For a brief, shining moment, it seemed the fundamental questions of political organization had been answered, and all that remained was to work out the details.

That moment felt like liberation. Like we’d escaped something fundamental about the human condition. Like our children would inherit a world where freedom was guaranteed, where progress was automatic, where the future promised only improvement over the past.

We hadn’t escaped. We’d been granted a reprieve.

The anomaly wasn’t Trump. The anomaly was that post-Cold War moment when it seemed like we’d permanently solved the problem of tyranny. We’re back now to what history normally looks like: uncertainty about the future, threat from those in power, the need to maintain dignity and meaning under conditions that don’t guarantee either.

This is normal history. And that’s terrifying for people who thought they’d escaped it.

What Normal History Means

Normal history means freedom is never guaranteed. Democratic institutions require active defense. Constitutional rights exist only so long as enough people insist they exist. The work of justice is generational, not achieved once and secured forever. Each generation must defend and extend the conditions of freedom, or watch them erode.

Normal history means your children’s future is uncertain—not because of some unique modern catastrophe, but because the future has always been uncertain. Your grandparents raised children during the Depression and World War II. Your great-grandparents raised children during industrialization’s worst abuses, before labor rights existed, when child mortality was common and medical care was primitive. Go back further and every generation faced plague, famine, war, and tyranny in forms more brutal and immediate than what we face now.

They raised children anyway. They built institutions anyway. They loved anyway. They found beauty anyway. They maintained their humanity anyway.

Not because they were heroes with exceptional courage. But because living well in the face of uncertainty is what humans do. It’s not unique to us—it’s the normal human condition across most of history.

The question was never “why is this happening to us?” The question has always been: “What do we do with the time that is given to us?”

What Fear Does

Here’s what I’m noticing in your responses, and in myself when I’m not careful: fear fragments our attention.

When you’re genuinely afraid for your children’s future, your own physical safety, or your economic survival, fear doesn’t just add worry to your life. It reorganizes your perception. Everything gets filtered through the lens of threat. Every story becomes confirmation the worst is coming. Every political development becomes evidence of inevitable collapse. Every moment of peace feels temporary, illusory, about to be shattered.

Fear makes you unable to see what’s still present. It causes you to abandon what matters in pursuit of security that doesn’t exist. And then—here’s the cruel part—that abandonment creates more fear, because you’ve lost your grounding in what’s real, which makes you more desperate for control, which makes you grasp harder, which creates more fear.

The spiral feeds itself.

And this is precisely what authoritarian systems aim for. They don’t just want compliance—they want you fragmented. So consumed by what might happen that you can’t be present to what actually is. So focused on the threat that you abandon the relationships, the work, the beauty, the meaning that make life worth defending in the first place.

Because once you’ve abandoned what matters, what exactly are you defending? Once you’ve let fear consume your capacity for presence, for love, for joy—what have you preserved?

An authoritarian doesn’t have to destroy your life if fear has already done it for him.

What’s Still There

So here’s what I want you to understand, what I need you to see: the things that matter most—the meaning that really matters and should matter—are still right in front of you.

Your children are still your children. Their laughter is still real. Their questions are still genuine. The moment when they learn something new, when they show you kindness, when they struggle and keep trying—those moments don’t become less real because politics is frightening. They don’t become less valuable because the future is uncertain.

The people you love are still there. The conversations that matter. The shared meals. The quiet moments of connection. The friend who calls when they know you’re struggling. The partner who understands how you take your coffee. The parent whose stories connect you to something larger than yourself.

The work you do that serves others is still work worth doing. Whether you’re teaching children or fixing cars or writing code or serving customers or caring for the sick—if your job makes someone’s day slightly better, slightly easier, slightly more bearable, that work has meaning. Not because it will save democracy, but because it serves a human being who needs to be served. That’s enough. That’s always been enough.

The beauty is still there. The sunset that catches you off guard. The song that moves you. The tree you pass every day, blazing red and gold. The moment of grace that arrives unasked and reminds you that the world contains more than threat, more than politics, more than fear.

These things don’t disappear because we’re back in normal history. They don’t become less real because institutions are failing. They don’t stop mattering because authoritarianism is on the rise.

The Testimony of History

People throughout history have loved their children under tyranny. They’ve found joy under oppression. They’ve maintained their humanity under conditions far worse than what we face.

Anne Frank found beauty in a chestnut tree from a hiding place where she would eventually be discovered and murdered. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote love letters from a Nazi prison. Václav Havel wrote plays under the scrutiny of the Communist regime. Nelson Mandela studied law in a cell on Robben Island. Primo Levi bore witness to horror while insisting on the dignity of consciousness itself.

I’m not citing these examples to minimize what we face or to suggest we should be grateful it’s not worse. I’m citing them to demonstrate something about human consciousness: the capacity to remain present to what matters is not destroyed by external threat. It can be tested, strained, challenged—but it endures if we choose to maintain it.

The meaning isn’t constructed from nothing. It’s there, in the relationships and experiences that have always made human life worthwhile. What we choose is whether we remain present to it or let fear fragment our attention so completely that we can’t see what’s still in front of us.

Fidelity to What’s Present

This is what I mean by fidelity—not as sentiment, not as escapism, not as retreat from politics, but as active choice to remain present to what’s real.

Fidelity to your children means showing up for them even when you’re afraid. Letting them see that you’re worried, but not letting worry consume their childhood. Maintaining the routines, the rituals, the ordinary moments that give them stability when the world feels unstable.

Fidelity to your work means doing it well, even when you’re exhausted and serving that customer with dignity, even when customer service feels like a farce. Fixing that problem, teaching that lesson, completing that task with integrity, even when larger systems seem broken beyond repair.

Fidelity to beauty means stopping to notice it. Let yourself be moved by the song, arrested by the sunset, touched by the grace that arrives unbidden. Not because these things solve anything, but because they’re real, and reality is what we’re defending.

Fidelity to the people you love means staying in a relationship even when you’re scared—having the conversation even when you’re tired—being present even when presence is difficult, choosing connection over isolation, even when isolation feels safer.

This isn’t toxic positivity. This isn’t “look on the bright side” or pretending everything is fine. Everything is not okay. The threats are real. The fear is rational.

But the choice to remain present to what matters while also acknowledging what threatens it—that’s not naivety. That’s discipline. That’s the work of maintaining coherence when everything conspires to fragment it.

Living Well as Resistance

Maintaining your humanity is not a retreat from resistance. It’s the foundation that makes resistance sustainable.

You cannot hold the center if you’ve abandoned what makes the center worth holding. You cannot defend democracy if you’ve already let authoritarianism destroy your capacity for presence, for love, for beauty, for meaning. You cannot sustain the fight across years—and this will be years, not months—if you’ve let fear consume the ground you stand on.

The person who goes to the protest, who calls their representative, who writes the essay, who bears witness—and then comes home and loves their children well, does their work with integrity, notices the beauty still present, maintains connection with people who matter—that person can sustain resistance across the long haul.

The person who lets fear fragment them so thoroughly that every moment is consumed by threat—who can’t be present to their children because they’re doom-scrolling, who can’t do their work well because they’re paralyzed by what might happen, who can’t see beauty because everything looks like evidence of collapse—that person burns out. Not because they’re weak, but because they’ve lost the ground that makes sustained resistance possible.

Authoritarian systems want you fragmented. They want you so consumed by fear that you abandon what makes you human. They want you so focused on the threat that you can’t see what you’re defending. They want you isolated, exhausted, unable to remain present to anything except your own anxiety.

Living well—loving your children, doing good work, finding beauty, maintaining relationships—is a refusal. It says: You don’t get to take this from me. You don’t get to fragment my attention so completely that I lose sight of what matters. You don’t get to win by making me abandon my humanity before you’ve even directly threatened it.

This isn’t a substitute for political action. This is what makes political action sustainable.

The Practice of Normal History

So what does this look like practically?

First: distinguish between what you can control and what you can’t. You cannot personally stop authoritarianism. You cannot guarantee your children’s political future. You cannot prevent every harm. But you can show up for your children today. You can do your work well today. You can notice beauty today. You can maintain a connection today. The things you actually control are more minor than you want them to be—but they’re real. And real is what matters.

Second: build practices that ground you in what’s present. Not as a discipline you force, but as attention you choose. The morning routine with your children. The moment of gratitude before meals. The walk where you actually notice what you’re seeing. The conversation where you’re fully present rather than half-checking your phone.

These aren’t consolation prizes. These are what always mattered most. You’re not settling for them because democracy is threatened—you’re remembering these are what democracy is supposed to serve.

Third: do your political work from the ground rather than panic. Make the calls. Send the emails. Show up to the protest. Bear witness. But do it from fidelity to what you’re defending, not fear of what you’re losing. The difference is subtle but crucial. Fear fragments and exhausts. Fidelity sustains.

Fourth: maintain community with people who see what you see. Share what grounds you. Ask what grounds them. Build common knowledge not just of threats, but of what remains real despite threats.

Fifth: accept that this is normal history, and normal history requires a long-term strategy. You’re not sprinting. You’re settling into a marathon that might last your entire life. That requires pacing. Sustainability. Maintaining the parts of your life that give you energy rather than consuming them in desperate attempts to control what you can’t.

What I’m Not Saying

I’m not saying ignore politics and focus only on your personal life. Political action matters. Resistance matters. The work of defending democratic institutions matters enormously.

I’m not saying your fear is overblown or irrational. Some of what you fear is already happening. Your pattern recognition is functioning correctly.

I’m not saying “it’s not that bad” or “others had it worse so stop complaining.” I’m saying others faced terrible things and maintained their humanity anyway—not because those things weren’t terrible, but because maintaining humanity is what humans do, even under terrible conditions.

I’m not offering false comfort. I’m offering what I think is true: the meaning that sustains resistance isn’t something you have to invent from scratch while everything falls apart. It’s there, in front of you, in the relationships and experiences you already value. You have to choose to remain present to it instead of letting fear fragment your attention so completely that you lose sight of it.

The Ground That Holds

One of you wrote: “Grieving my friends and my republic.”

That grief is real and appropriate. We are losing things that matter. Institutions we trusted are failing. Norms we thought permanent are dissolving. People we thought we knew are choosing complicity. The republic we thought we had is not the republic we’re getting.

Grieve that. Mourn it honestly. Don’t let anyone tell you the loss isn’t real.

But don’t let grief become the only thing you feel. Don’t let the loss of institutions blind you to what institutions were meant to serve. Don’t let the betrayal of some people make you forget the fidelity of others. Don’t let the collapse of false certainty make you unable to see what’s still present.

Your children are still your children. Your friends are still your friends. Beauty is still beautiful. Work that serves others still matters. Love is still love. These aren’t second prizes for losing democracy. These are what democracy was supposed to protect in the first place.

And here’s the thing: people who remember what they’re defending are more dangerous to authoritarians than people consumed by fear of what they’re losing.

The person who protests because they’re terrified can be intimidated. The person who protests because they refuse to abandon what matters cannot. Fear makes you controllable. Fidelity makes you solid.

The Question Before Us

When you imagine the worst-case scenario—dictatorship established, rights suspended, the constitutional order collapsed—what is it, specifically, that you’re most afraid of losing?

Sit with that question. For many, the answer isn’t abstract principle. It’s: I’m afraid I won’t be able to protect my children. I’m afraid I’ll lose the people I love. I’m afraid I won’t be able to do work that matters. I’m afraid I’ll lose my dignity, my humanity, my capacity to recognize beauty and meaning.

These are the right things to fear losing. These are what actually matter.

But here’s what I need you to see: you can choose right now to remain present to these things. You don’t have to wait for political salvation to love your children well. You don’t have to wait for democracy to be secured before you notice beauty. You don’t have to wait for institutional stability before you do your work with integrity.

The choice to remain present to what matters is available now. Not later, after the crisis passes. Not someday, when safety is guaranteed. Now.

And making that choice now—choosing fidelity to what’s present while also resisting what threatens it—is not resignation. It’s not accommodation. It’s not giving up.

It’s standing on solid ground. It’s refusing to let fear fragment you before authoritarianism has even directly touched you. It’s maintaining what makes you human, so that when resistance requires everything from you, you still have something to give.

For Those Working the Gas Station

One of you wrote about the gnawing gap between the world that needs building and the time lost every day just surviving. Working the gas station job while knowing there’s bigger work that needs doing. Watching good people get ground down by economic terror designed to keep them exhausted and divided.

I see you. The economic precarity is real. The exhaustion is real. The sense that you’re losing time while the world burns is real.

But consider this: the work you’re doing at that gas station serves real people on real days. Someone pulls up exhausted from their own job, worried about their kids, ground down by their version of economic terror. And you serve them. You make their day slightly easier, slightly more bearable, slightly less dehumanizing than it would be if you treated them the way the system treats you.

That’s not nothing. That’s not wasted time. That’s the actual fabric of human dignity maintained under hostile conditions.

Because the person who maintains their humanity while working the gas station, who serves with dignity while being economically terrorized, who stays grounded in what matters while building alternatives—that person is more dangerous to extractive capitalism than someone consumed by resentment and exhaustion.

Fidelity to what matters doesn’t eliminate injustice. But it prevents injustice from eliminating you before you’ve built the alternative.

For Those Fearing the Protest

One of you wrote about fearing injury or death at upcoming mass protests. That fear is rational. The state has demonstrated a willingness to use violence against protesters. The threat is real and it’s escalating.

I can’t tell you whether to risk your body. That’s a calculation only you can make.

But I can tell you this: the decision to protest is different from the decision to resist. Resistance takes many forms. Bearing witness takes many forms. Holding the center takes many forms.

If you go to the protest, go from fidelity rather than fear—because you refuse to abandon what matters, not because you’re terrified of what happens if you don’t. Fear is easy to intimidate. Fidelity is hard to move.

If you don’t go—if you assess the risk outweighs what you can contribute—that doesn’t make you complicit. There are many ways to hold the center. Many ways to refuse accommodation. Many ways to bear witness.

The person who stays home and loves their children well, maintains integrity in daily work, refuses to let fear fragment their attention, and builds community with others who see clearly—that person is holding the center too.

Not every resistance is visible. Not every refusal is dramatic. But the quiet maintenance of what matters, day after day, under conditions designed to make maintenance impossible—that’s resistance too.

For Those Who’ve Lost Their Neighbors

One of you wrote about the terror of knowing people who “would totally turn dissenters like us in for existing.” The fear that neighbors have become threats. That the people you thought you knew have revealed themselves willing to collaborate with authoritarianism.

That betrayal is real. That fear is rational. And it’s among the most psychologically devastating aspects of authoritarian rise: not just that the state threatens you, but that your own community fragments, that people you trusted reveal themselves untrustworthy, that the social fabric tears along lines you didn’t know existed.

I don’t have easy comfort for this.

But remember: not everyone has betrayed you. The people who responded to my question—you’re still here. You still see clearly. You still refuse to accommodate. You’re not alone, even though the fragmentation makes it feel that way.

Build common knowledge with those who remain trustworthy. Share what grounds you. Ask what grounds them. Create spaces—physical or digital—where you can speak freely without fear of being reported. Maintain the community that makes resistance sustainable.

And don’t let the betrayal of some make you unable to trust anyone. That’s what authoritarianism wants—total atomization.

The neighbors who would turn you in are real threats. Take precautions. But don’t let them occupy so much of your attention that you can’t see the neighbors who wouldn’t. The friends who remain faithful. The community that endures even as the larger society fragments.

That community—however small, however embattled—is real. Stay connected to it. It’s part of what you’re defending.

Living Well in Normal History

I’m not offering salvation. I’m not promising victory. I’m not guaranteeing that if you maintain fidelity to what matters, everything will work out.

What I’m offering is this: a way to live well in normal history. A way to maintain your humanity under conditions that don’t guarantee it. A way to resist that’s sustainable across years rather than weeks. A way to hold the center that doesn’t require you to abandon what makes the center worth holding.

This is what humans have always done when the moment of guaranteed progress ends and the permanent work of defending freedom begins. When the anomaly gives way to the norm and we discover our grandparents’ struggles haven’t been permanently solved—they were paused, and now they’re ours again.

They did this work. We can do this work. Not because we’re special, but because we’re human.

The fear you’re feeling is appropriate. The grief you’re experiencing is legitimate. The threats you’re perceiving are real.

But the meaning that sustains resistance through those threats—that’s real too. And it’s right in front of you. In your children’s laughter. In your friend’s voice. In the work you do that serves others. In the beauty that arrests you despite everything. In the love that persists despite threat.

Don’t let fear blind you to what’s still present. Don’t let authoritarianism win by fragmenting you before it’s even directly touched you. Don’t let the collapse of false certainty become the collapse of all meaning.

The wire still holds because we choose to walk it together, from ground that’s real, toward a future we’ll defend whether or not that defense succeeds.

This is normal history. This is the human condition. This is what we do.

Hold what matters. Walk from solid ground. Stay connected to what’s real.

The center holds because we choose to hold it. Not because holding is easy, not because outcomes are guaranteed, but because the alternative—abandonment of what makes us human—is unthinkable.

Two plus two equals four. Your children are still your children. There are twenty-four hours in this day. And on this day, the meaning that matters most is still right in front of you.

May love carry us home. Not as escape, but as fidelity. Not as sentiment, but as practice. Not as certainty about the future, but as presence to what’s real right now.

The ground still holds. Stand on it.