In the Tarot spread I use the most, there is a position entitled hopes and fears. The question it asks is this: Will you accept your potential?

With this position, giving in to your fears means saying no to that possibility, clinging to your fears rather than opening to life. Saying yes to hope means making plans (right now!) to make things come true. It means accepting responsibility for your future.

I completely understand the Buddha’s look at hope and fear as the twin evils. I understand how easy it is to live out of what is true now. But I am a Westerner with a Judeo-Christian sense of the word Hope. I cherish those with the courage to live as if the world were different now.

I understand how seductive our fears are and that we can obsess about them. But I also know that fear is a healthy response to things that are dangerous. When we face those fears we can make good decisions about behaviors in which we might not want to engage or strategies that can make us better able to cope with what frightens us if in fact we must engage.

But what the Buddha was pushing at, I believe, is the notion that we live in the present. Some biblical sage said it this way: “Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof” or as people have rephrased that “Don’t borrow trouble.” We have to stay in our day’s chaos and work our way out toward tomorrow.

Because Peace is also here. If it is chaotic then tackle a tiny corner of it and smooth that out. And then the next corner. I’m preaching to myself here, slowly working on the “but firsts!”)

And here’s what else. Celebrate your progress, because that will encourage you to make more. Every step toward Peace is a step in Peace.