OLIVER SHIFLISH - LESS FEAR MORE HAPPINESS (sample)

hug to comfort him. But it never came. Furthermore that
made him ill, so ill that eventually he died, prematurely,
never having had real enjoyment from life.
I say that my brother was determined to die young even
before he was born. It was THE FEAR of our mother, the
fear of remaining helpless in solitude, ultimately the fear
of death that produced all his suffering. She wanted only
to “save” herself, not caring about anything else. Actually,
what she wanted was a simple thing. She wanted to
remarry after a divorce. It seems the most natural thing
to do, and yes it is natural, but in this case my mother let
her fear possess her... fear took over the command, and
love along with loving compassion were pushed away. It
was the cause of all the suffering of my brother, and also
others in our family – my brother’s two sons, my nephews,
who witnessed the early death of their father. And so the
trail of fear continues.
By going back in time I realized that the initial fear for my
mother started much earlier. In the Second World War,
at the age of 10, our mother was sent to be a housemaid,
hundreds of kilometers away from home. Her father got
rid of both her and her two brothers, because he couldn’t
feed all seven children during the war. When my mother
spoke of those days, she remembered being forced to
work so hard that she asked for death to come so that
she could eventually rest.
Fortunately, her physical will to live was stronger and she
survived the war. But the fear was deeply embedded in
her mind from this point – fear of being alone at age 10
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