fear
Again, I will be completely non-specific. It's this canker upon my soul, this ulcer gnawing away at my mind, the kind of malady that doesn't kill you, just weakens you bit by bit, wasting you away, until one day, you just don't feel like getting out of bed.
You start wondering if it's only hypochondria…maybe I'm not really sick, it's just all in my mind, and if I just suck it up and power through, I'll be all right.
My resolve, for some unknown reason, is wavering these days.
I can't get to sleep.
But I pondered the nature of my particular fear. Here I am, again, comfortable, except for the uneasiness of uncertainty, despite knowing that so there are so many parts of my destiny I have no control over. But it is sophistry to imagine that I have absolutely no control. I can't abbrogate my responsibility to the universe, claim that it's not my fault, even though all the tragic, miserable sequelae of my life are the results of my inaction rather than my actions.
(Judas hung himself for what he did, but I think the whole point of Jesus' prophecy about the cock crowing is that Peter was just as guilty for what he didn't.)
Maybe I am not seeing it right. I imagine that there is something missing, some vast void inside myself that I have to fill somehow, and that without being complete, I'm doomed to fade away. And then I think to myself, maybe there is no void. Maybe I'm just paranoid, and this is the way things are meant to be.
And yet, even this rings hollow.
(Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.)
I'm standing at the seashore, wondering if I should get in my boat and set sail. No, what I'm really wondering is, will I regret it if I don't set sail? Can I just stay on this side of the ocean, all alone, choosing the familiar misery rather than taking a chance on possible happiness?
And, yet, the longer I sit here waiting, the bigger the ocean gets. If my ancestors didn't get in their boats, there would be no statues on Easter Island (and yet, despite their courage, their domain still shrank, by the ravages of those stronger and more brutal.)
I know that it's all on me. I have to make a decision, I have to take a risk, if I want anything to change. And I will fall on my ass a lot, I will have egg thrown in my face. I will weep with every failure, and each time, my soul will shrink further and further upon itself. Yet I know that I can't stay here, that this stability of not trying is an illusion, that one day I'll wake up wondering what I did with my life, or worse, that I'll know that I wasted it, chasing sterile visions down empty roads that lead to nowhere.
Why have I come to believe that it is better to do nothing and fail, than to try something and fail? Why would I rather be hopeless instead of having hope, however infinitessimal?