Walking on the upper west side of Manhattan along Amsterdam Avenue, an industrial debris hauler hit a pothole and banged the vehicle up and down.

The noise is one I’ve heard a thousand times before here in the Big Apple, but this time I flinched as it passed.

I felt like one of the extras in that movie "The Siege" when people kept ducking for cover when buses were backfiring.

This was on the same day that it was revealed that letters containing anthrax were sent the NBC news and other media outlets in the country.

I spent that day talking to apprehensive and even outright scared people who were aware, more now than ever, that the turf of the war on terrorism is not limited to Afghanistan, where U.S.-led forces continue to pound the country with bombs and missiles.

On this night, when I realized my nerves of steel have softened to what may be aluminum, I was making my way to a surprise birthday party for my best friend’s girlfriend.

I noticed how the streets are so empty relative to what I consider the normal activity for a Friday night.

Even the folks on the street, I noticed, have their heads on a swivel, looking in almost every direction as they cross streets or watch large vehicles pass them by.

We are afraid – and we have good reason to be.

We’ve not only seen two icons of technological genius reduced to rubble, we now have to look at and be suspicious of something that normally doesn’t concern us at all — the mail.

We hear that places like Yankee Stadium and Disneyland were included in the terrorist targeting process and we wonder where our adversaries will strike next.

Along the way, between what we envision and what will really take place, it seems that our way of life is being threatened by just the very notion of being bombed, poisoned, hijacked or whatever.

It is keeping many people at home, keeping them from vacations and even having them reconsider where they work.

There is no doubt that fear is healthy.

It keeps most of us from doing things that may put us in danger or it gives us the adrenaline to survive a catastrophic situation.

The nth degree of fear of course is paranoia. That is not healthy. It freezes your mind and keeps you from concentrating on aspects of your life that are important.

A famous black journalist once said, "History is not an accident; it is a choice."

We can choose how our descendants will read about what happens 100 years or a thousand from now.

We get to decide whether or not we will be seen as a society that lived as captives of our anxiety or as one that fought back the only way civilians can, by choosing to resist the urge to quiver and shrink back from our own fears.

Two thousand years ago, despite the fear of being physically beaten, tortured and killed in the most hideous ways imaginable, a much smaller group of people than the size of our community managed to not only survive the onslaught of terror inflicted on them, but their defiance and courage changed the religion of the government that went after them in the first place.

Now, of course, the rise of Christianity is a giant analogy to make in com-parison to the struggle of our daily lives, but at the time the masses didn’t see Christ and his apostles as a big deal either. It was a small but powerful movement that became the third-largest religion in the world.

The way of life here in New York, no matter how crappy it seems at times, is still better than living in many other parts of the world.

We never think of it as a movement, but in many ways, now more than ever, it is.

To go about our business without interference, or at least the threat of it, is called freedom.

Your individual freedom and com-forts came at a price.

To keep your inheritance will now require something of you.

Live bravely by living your life.

It helps the battle against terrorism.

It does this by defeating the main goal of the monsters we all fight to defeat – to allow fear to cripple the way you live.