Musings & Philosophies

The Fear, Part One

In school, almost everyone has had the prompt involving your fears, worst day, stuff like that.  Well, straight in, I didn't really know what my fears were for a long time.  I thought it was bugs for the longest time because I had such a strong reaction to them psychologically, but self-study has helped me learn that my two main fears are abandonment and powerlessness.

My fear of bugs was an extension of powerlessness.  I was afraid of being bitten and slowly deteriorating.  Unable to stop it, unable to do anything to prevent myself from dying, unable to do a damn thing to help myself.  Looking back, this is a fear that I've learned.  Time online with tons of voices and people across the world really showed me just how tiny of a part I am in the universe.  That scared me.  Afraid of that constant what-if question.  Afraid of the thought that I was a minuscule speck in existence.  Afraid that my actions were meaningless.  Really, I am.  Yes, I'm but a tiny piece in the puzzle of life, but a wee pigment in the tapestry of existence.  Yes, in the long-run, I will probably be forgotten, and all record of my existence will be gone.

None of it matters, though.  People will so often say that life is short, yet they seem to forget that it's the longest thing any of us will ever experience.  The issue is the scale of it all.  Yes, in the big picture, each and every individual is meaningless.  However, that's not where we live.  We don't exist in the big picture.  What we need to focus on is here and now in our lifetime.  I came to terms with that a few years ago, and it's made such a drastic change in my outlook on life.  It doesn't matter if what I do will affect the cosmos.  What matters is what I do will affect the people around me.  In their life, I'll have an impact, no matter how small.  People are just arranged like that.  Everything we do and see shapes us as an individual.  We're the sum of three things: what we encounter, how and why we respond to them, and our outlook on things.

Now, abandonment.  I really would rather not look into why this is one of my big fears, but hey, what can you do.  Not much is permanent, as permanent is just another concept that's impossible to prove or observe due to the nature of it.  I really do think this has been one I've just kept from childhood and never grew out of.  I'll admit the subject of it has changed, but the point itself is still there.