Leap Of Faith

Advice columnist Ann Landers receives an average of 10,000 letters a month, nearly all of them from people who are burdened with problems. Asked if there is one predominant theme in her readers’ requests for help, she replied, “Yes there is — fear. People are afraid of losing their loved ones, their health, their wealth. People are afraid of life itself.”

Fear makes us humans believe the worst. Obsessive fears can transform benign and even beneficial objects into symbols of deadly terror. Persons who live in constant fear of the possibility of sickness are capable of translating an ordinary itch into a symptom of some terrible disease. We call them hypochondriacs. There are technical names for others who fear such things as being alone … water … high altitudes … closed-in areas … crowds, etc. The excessive fears themselves are called “phobias,” and one who is beset with an accumulation of these obsessions is said to be suffering from “phobiaphobia.”

After many years of air…