Listening to a television talk-show one night I heard the cartoonist Jules Pfeiffer discussing a comic strip he once drew. In it, a little boy was afraid to go to school because he thought his parents might move away while he was gone. He didn't want to go to bed at night becuse he feared that his parents might die while he slept. "Coping with fears is a terrific battle for a child," said Pfeiffer. "It's like being on 24-hour guard duty." He went on to say that he had received many letters about the cartoon from adults who said that it was that way for them, too, that you don't have to be a child to feel surrounded by fear.

Sometimes it feels like fear is lurking around a corner or hovering over our heads. It attacks us at different levels. Some fears are relatively minor. What is going t…