What if life was darkness, and living, fear?
Last night, I stepped out of the house, into the dark. The darkness was thick, I could feel it in my skin, I felt I was embedded in it; it was just the substance of all that was. Suddenly, I was frozen in fear and chills ran from the crown of my head, through all my body parts down to my feet. At this moment, I strained my eyes to see, but all to no avail, my next step was uncertain, I feared I would trip and fall with no one to catch me. In my mind, I knew where I was going, but I feared I wouldn’t make it to the gate; I could step on a snake, or scorpion, or thorn or maybe the heap of mud somewhere in the compound. I could slip and fall, get stained or injured.
This is exactly what we get in life. We go to bed each night, first of all, scared of oversleeping, and then in the morning, we wake up with or without a plan drawn for the day. At this moment, fear kicks in again, we are scared of going late to work, scared of getting stuck in traffic, scared of missing an appointment, or deadline, scared of not hitting a target, and so, fear becomes our motivation. We fight on and on, from one stage of life to another, each day, our fears take new shapes and forms.
As kids, we had our own form of fears, though most of them were borne by our parents; the fear of not grooming the kids to a desired expectation, the fear of failing as parents. Each episode of sickness came with a renewed form of fear, each stage of development, from the time the baby crawls, to when he walks, when he starts schooling and so forth. At a point in development, when the baby has got to self realization, a huge portion of the fear is handed over to him, and he lives on, with one form of fear or the other. First, the fear of failure; in school, in a chosen career, in a relationship and so on, One day, he falls in love, and his fears are doubled. There is also fear of death, disease, poverty, dissatisfaction, lack, rejection and so forth…
Why all these fears? Maybe, because we can’t certainly predict the next step in the darkness (life) even though in our minds, we all know where we want to be, what we want to have, what we’re working towards, but yet “nothing ever promised tomorrow today”
Surprisingly, we fight life each and every day, we strain so hard, with faith, we cling to every source of light available, we shine light on every dark part. With faith, we take that bold step against all odds. It is a fight everyone must fight, because clinging to light itself is war, not meant for the feeble or faint minded. (Even though at the end, everyone is defeated by darkness and fear and silence)
Finally, should I say we all hate life (darkness) and no one enjoys living (fear)? If not, why do we embrace light? Why do we fight fear with faith? When at the end, all that is and will ever be is darkness…..
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