The Fear of Falling (When You’ve Never Been Pushed)

There is a particular kind of fear I keep encountering in rooms built for comfort.

It isn’t the fear of hunger, or war, or displacement. It’s not the fear of losing a child, or crossing a sea, or sleeping somewhere unsafe. It’s subtler than that. Quieter. Better dressed.

It is the fear of falling from a position that has never required climbing.

I hear it in the voices of white men and women who speak urgently about borders, about “losing control,” about things being “taken away.” I hear it in the clenched anger behind conversations about refugees, immigration, and entitlement. And each time, I find myself asking the same question:

What exactly are you afraid of?

Because the threat they describe never seems to match reality. The people they fear are barred from working, barred from accessing support, barred from belonging. They live on £17 a week. They wait years in legal limbo. They are surveilled, policed, delayed, doubted. They arrive already stripped of power.

And yet, somehow, they are framed as dangerous.

This is where the contradiction lives:

Those who shout the loudest about “self-reliance” are often the most buffered by inheritance, networks, passports, and systems designed to catch them if they fall.

Those who rage about “handouts” are frequently benefiting from tax structures, property markets, and generational wealth that quietly redistribute upwards.

Those who fear scarcity are surrounded by abundance. And still, the anger persists.

I don’t believe this anger is really about refugees. I think it’s about fragility.

Because when you’ve been raised inside a system that tells you the world belongs to you by default, equality feels like loss. Accountability feels like attack. And the presence of others, especially those who survive without the protections you’ve always known, feels destabilising.

Their existence exposes a truth that’s deeply uncomfortable: that safety is not earned, but allocated. That success is not purely meritocratic. That comfort is not proof of superiority, only proximity to power. So fear rushes in to protect the story.

Fear becomes louder than logic. Louder than evidence. Louder than empathy.

And fear, when repeated often enough, hardens into something else.

Cruelty.

We see this cruelty justified in language about “queue jumping,” as if survival were an orderly process. We see it in policies designed to deter rather than protect. We see it in the casual dismissal of suffering as unfortunate but necessary collateral damage in the preservation of comfort.

And perhaps most disturbingly, we see it in moments of hypocrisy that go unnamed. The same people who stock emergency pantries “just in case.” The same people who insure, diversify, invest, and plan exit strategies. The same people who fled cities during pandemics, who cross borders for tax benefits, and who would book the next flight the moment unrest unfolded, are often the loudest when their own mobility is challenged.

I’ve heard the outrage when a visa is denied in some distant, warmer country because of retirement age restrictions, disbelief that a passport and a pension weren’t enough. And yet, in the same breath, these are the voices warning about “illegal immigrants” coming here, as if movement is only legitimate when it serves their comfort. I keep asking myself how the irony escapes them. How entitlement can grow so unchecked that it dulls not only empathy, but self-recognition too.

When they flee, it’s sensible. When they prepare, it’s responsible. When they protect their families, it’s human. When others do the same, it becomes criminal. This isn’t ignorance. It’s selective recognition.

An inability, or refusal, to see oneself reflected in the other.

What unsettles me most is not that fear exists. Fear is human. Fear keeps us alive.

What unsettles me is how fear is curated, fed, and weaponised by those who benefit from it. How it is redirected away from the systems that exploit us all, and toward those with the least power to defend themselves.

Because while people argue over boats and borders, wealth continues to consolidate. While refugees are blamed for strained services, corporations evade responsibility. While anger is aimed downward, the structures that produce inequality remain untouched.

Yet the irony of this all, is that the people shouting the loudest are not winning. They are being played. They are offered scapegoats instead of solutions. Outrage instead of accountability. An illusion of control in a system that would discard them too, if it ever became convenient.

That’s the quiet tragedy of it all; the fear they feel is real, but it’s been misdirected.

The danger is not coming from people fleeing war, persecution, or climate collapse. The danger is a world that teaches us to protect comfort at the expense of humanity. A world that convinces us dignity is scarce, rather than deliberately withheld.

I’ve worked alongside people who have lost everything and still offer generosity without hesitation. Who understand community not as charity, but as survival. Who show up with humour, warmth, and pride in the face of systems designed to exhaust them.

Their presence doesn’t threaten society. It exposes what we’ve forgotten.

That safety is not diminished by sharing. That dignity is not finite. That the instinct to flee danger is not weakness, but courage.

And perhaps this is what truly frightens those who rage the most.

Not that refugees will take something from the, but that they will reveal how little of what we cling to was ever truly ours.

Because once you see that, you can’t unsee it. And comfort, when confronted with truth, rarely survives unchanged.