Afraid

• I am not afraid to think differently than everyone else outside my own community, and occasionally than those within my community
• I am not afraid to seem old fashioned, quirky, out-of-step or mixed up, though I value my community enough to adjust if those I respect the most tell me I should
• I am not afraid to assert that it is modern sensibilities that are wrong, not my old-fashioned ways
• I am not afraid to make my dog stay outside during the afternoon or overnight, or to throw a shoe at the cat if it wont stop yowling.
• I am not afraid to have a counter-cultural home where the TV is rarely on, where we sit down to dinner together many nights of the week, where famous paintings are on the walls and we sometimes read the Bible at the dinner table
• I am not afraid to drive an older car and be perceived as one of those guys that just does not smell right in the nostrils of SUV drivers
• I am not afraid to tell my children No on occasion to sleepovers, late nights out, immoderate expenditures, too-sloppy clothing, leisure time on the computer, carousing at the mall, certain movies

• I am afraid of appearing to be a dotard, a profligate or a buffoon before my kids, or just out of touch, too set in his ways, unable to consider new ideas
• I am afraid of standing firm so long that I alienate those I love
• I am afraid that my car will break down on the side of the road because I waited too long to get the transmission fluid changed
• I am afraid of the Beast.  By that I mean the vast political/economic system that eats those critters who wander or straggle out into daylight too far behind the rest - those who run afoul of the powerful or have too much financial exposure and miss one payment or fail to fill out some required form and find themselves unable to reenter because of perceived delinquency and a record with a red flag in some computer marking him a risk.
• I am afraid of seductive influences that lure my kids away into sensuality, self-seeking, cynicism, permissiveness, relativism, mammon