Someone, whose name I forgot right now, once said that “to fear love is to fear life and those who fear love are three parts dead”. But what is to fear life itself? Or even better; what is to fear fear?
Fear is what keeps us from going on with our lives. It is what holds all of our insecurities and bring them up at the wrong moment, place and time. I cannot say that I have never felt fear in my life; happy are the ones who can. Right now I’m afraid. Afraid of what may become of me in the future; scared of the wrong choices I might choose and above all, scared of having done it all wrong so far.
Some fears change, others what’s different and in some cases, even what’s normal and mundane. Fear hinders us from growing and slows our happiness. Never will I say that I know better or that all that I have lived was the right thing to do.
I have fallen in love with the wrong person, only to find out later that, the same person was in love with me all along, but just could not find a way to say so. I have judged people in the wrong way, in most of it, I was happily mistaken, but in others, the slap came so fast that I sometimes still wonder why.
There is no right path to life. There is no solution to our problems and dissatisfaction. Life, itself, is like this; one dissatisfaction after the other. Paul Gauguin was a painter whose life was filled with it. He was never happy with his family, housing, job. He lived in Paris, Tahiti, painted pictures of the tropical islands and later in his life, just before he died, while in a tropical paradise did he paint a snow scene in Paris.
We as human beings tend to analyze what people around us think and do; never doing so with ourselves. We fear the others. What they are, what they do, what they say and what they choose. But that is when we forget to stop and see; maybe, just maybe, all that we are criticizing, is simply a reflection of what we really are or what we really are drawn to.
Sometimes, letting go is the hardest thing in life to do. We are constantly being let down by people we have always judged as ‘solid’ in our lives. Friends from youth turn their back at us. Lovers simply walk out. Children leave their parents behind. And we, well, we are the worst one. We forget everything we create for ourselves. Every rule and every belief for anything that resembles – even if just a small glimpse – something better. And that is when all goes down to nothing. Everything loses it purpose, meaning, direction and sense. Everything seems empty, shallow, disposable and unwanted. Our lives stop once more, as it did many times before. Each and every stop seems like the last one. We lose our will to live, our desire to stand up and fight another day. Some complete this wish, others simply acknowledge that if they were to go right now, it would not make a difference, as for others, fighting this battle is what makes live so perfect in all its flaws.
