Whilst flying over Greece, I got to pondering. The instigating idea, ‘a life lived in fear is a life half lived’, prompted me to sharing this thought. But, however, I stopped.
What does it mean to someone who feels sure in their beliefs, who feels sound in their knowing they comply with religious and social mores? How do the people I know conceptualise ‘fear’, and who am I to assume they, one, might welcome my condescension, and, two, that I’m not projecting?
Wrapping myself into a pretzel still leads me to comparative analysis. Still I feel an urge to provide solutions to resolve the hesitancy and anxiety I observe in others. Still, I attenuate my impetuousness with the fact that another’s life can only ever, at best, be partially known.
Consequently, I point a finger at myself and lead by example.
Hence I begin with the statement that fearlessly treading sans angels and not looking before leaping has created a lifetime of insecurity and one devoid of material resources: such things require persistence and patience.
My life is a tapestry of adventure, caution thrown to the wind, and hovering destitution.
Paradoxically, I find myself flying over Greece contemplating decadence.
On my deathbed, were I to consider my life in review in this current stream of thought, would contain no regrets except that of leaving no enduring legacy.
This website and the people I have taught and had an impact on reflect some worth I’ve had in this life, and I am deeply proud of the way I’ve hurled myself into life, drinking it to the lees.
But I’m effectively destitute and grasping at straws for my next, my fifth, career.
How will I support myself as I continue stomping through my fifties and into my sixties? Who will or how will I care for myself therein and beyond?
As Nietzsche defined decadence, the throwing away life for fear of death (my paraphrasing), I’ve begun to fear I’ve thrown away my life in the pursuit of growth and fun: I’ve built nothing that I can stand upon with my own two feet.
Is that not also decadence? Now a different type of fear grips me… the fear that I have not provided adequate resources for myself to live, let alone thrive.
Odd how different levels of life have parallels. One the one hand, I have determinedly overcome and addressed my deepest fears, I wrestled the lion to the ground. Yet, now, I am possessed by a greater and more realistic fear, and one with material consequences.
My future life is now the source of the fears conquered in my past.
Now must I grip the bull by the horns.
A D R A N 