Wednesday, November 16, 2011

16112011

Taking fear by the throat.



In times of uncertainty we tend to triumph after struggles, efforts made to renew the feeling of assurance. In times of certainty we tend to descend on a cloud of white, soft pillows and forget about the reality. Our irises turn marble white, our mouths form a straight line instead of the curvy shape of a smile and we hear nothing but a constant speaker in our heads repeating the monotonous mantra of a Chinese woman: ”Please wait in the line.” We become slaves to our routines, numb to the events that break them.

This is when fear creeps into the moments of nearly falling asleep but not quite, into those steps you take towards something unsual but never end up taking, into to those thoughts that made you feel invincible before.

Certainty. The faint shroud of mist that you always try to hold close to your fragile body, the elusive, pencil-grey haze you can never touch.

Fear is something that people don't discuss nowadays. I think it's partly because our social environment does not want people sharing their weaknesses, speaking aloud the things that might lessen their strong, ambitious image. A man in a black suit, tailored for him, with his new eyewear blinking in the morning sun, rushing into the hectic maze of people and traffic lights. The same rush, which he has felt every morning for the past six days after eating the same breakfast – two eggs with the sunnyside up, a cup of tar-black coffee and a toast with three thumbnails of blackberry jam – for the past six years. He's not afraid of anything, except for his wife if a business partner were to ask him the question. And they would both laugh.

I am afraid of failure. I've been trying to find excuses for it - stress about success, ambitions, meaning of life, even. These are the ambivalent words that appear on the screen before my eyes in the times of uncertainty. But in all honesty, it's the callous fear that pushes me through times of certainty. Fear of failure that compresses me into a formless zombie that goes by his everyday routines without a single thought of his own.

Break your routines. Take fear by the throat, strangle him. Make him reason with the sky above and the ground below while his irises turn into marble, pale as the snow during the harshest of winters. Reason without hope.

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