"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
-Frank Herbert

The Bene Gesserit litany against fear is one of the strongest examples of a clever, spiritual-sounding concept from a piece of fiction being turned into a near-religious text.  It sounds magnificent, and it echoes many sentiments of Western thought. Perhaps it’s less meaningful to people whose religious cultures make death part of an infinitely iterating cycle and not the end point of a linear process (see: apocalypse, Christian obsession with.)

But the litany, along with the existence of the Bene Gesserit and the rest of the Dune universe, is a fictional proposition. Frank Herbert wrote fiction. He made it all up. That it sounds like a real religion is simply because he did a good job of it.  By way of comparison, consider The Force, which is essential Qi in a British accent. Good old Ether if you like, if it was real and semi-sentient. Lucas didn’t invent that out of thin air (*laughs in alchemist*) but patched it together from established texts. He got away with it because his audience of pre-adolescent North Americans had by and large never heard of Taoism.

We’re meant to overcome our fears, but I have a very different attitude these days. I don’t need to ‘conquer’ my fears before doing The Big Things. I’ve tried and tried to make myself fearless before doing something, and it’s a waste of time.  Go ahead and have the fear, but do the thing anyway. Doing The Thing is maybe the only way to get rid of the fear.

As Space Mom said, “stay afraid, but do it anyway.” If anyone was ever Strong with the Force, it was Carrie Fisher.

So grab your maker hooks and let’s ride this sandbitch into tomorrow. Enjoy this you-failed-witch-school-but-yay-now-you-don’t-have-to-fuck-a-Harkonnen litany against giving a shit about being afraid.

And if anyone mentions that these are two different sci-fi franchises, I will literally scream.

I can’t do shit about the fear
It can kill me if I let it, but I don’t think it will
Besides, there is no such thing as total obliteration
I will face my fear
I will let it walk along with me
It will not keep me from taking another step
The fear will probably never go away. Regardless, I remain