A Worldly Gloom

It seems a lifetime has passed since the year 2000. 12 years ago I was still a teenager, frightened almost to death at the prospect of turning into what society calls an ‘adult'...

Sick and hopeless throughout my early 20s, only to fall into more despair, bad luck and hurt, without forgetting my inability to read people properly and thus too often having surrounded myself with the worst kind… that is the look-back that gives me shivers of dread today. And as I approach the next decade of my life, I find myself half-relieved to be leaving behind this ‘youth’ people naively envy, regret, wish for or worst of all embellish to the point of grotesque fantasy... for youth is nothing but the state one must go through involving the loss of one’s innocence one white feather at a time through worldly experiences (more particularly those linked to other people).  

'Tis trully a time of loss, this youth… when one must slowly turn away from their dreams to accept ‘reality’, and in that one is often obliged to read the acceptance of second-bests and compromises.  And so as I reach the threshold that is to lead me to full womanhood – even though I feel so much like a child inside – I still clutch the tatters that once formed my dreams close to my chest…  for so long as I still hold even mere tatters and cinders of what once was a flamboyant youth’s dream, I remain with something to long and hope for… 

And as I lay in bed feeling sick and sorry for myself my thoughts lingered once more on the elements that shape us into 'who' we ultimately are. This time, the crucial impact of judgement came to the fore. Below are the thoughts I jotted down quickly on a piece of paper earlier:

It all comes down to the fear of judgement. After all, isn’t the fear of what others may think of us - their esteem, and ultimately the rank we are given by our peers - the strongest weapon Man has ever had against his fellow Man? It comes down to whether one manages to overcome or transcend that fear or not. Indeed, it seems that the outcome in terms of who we turn out to be in the end depends mostly on whether we transcend that fear, and as such the outcome can vary greatly to the point of reaching completely opposite life outcomes. This means that a man who remains enslaved to his fear of judgement will be shackled to a life of atrophy, limited in what he achieves throughout his very existence both in essence (inner life) and action - an outcome as opposed to having freed himself from the fear of judgement as day and night. And so it is that Man’s greatest - or ultimate - means of control over himself and others has always been at his feet under the guise of this fear so intimately nurtured by our very need to survive and evolve as part of a group – within societies.

This last paragraph is arguably little more than a so-called note to self.