I'm a hedgehog and this is my fog, nice to meet you! (The entry on the holy fear)
To begin with, I am in the fog. The fog surrounds me everywhere - both physically and mentally. My fog was getting almost liquid by the end of the second week in Pacifica. By that time I realized how very strange and hilarious my situation is - I stay in the mountainous house within driving distance of all big cities where I have no need neither chance to go. What is more, I was left pretty much alone with a library full of books on spiritual development, healthy food, yoga and depression and with the Internet full of articles, live journals, university and scholarship webpages.
But above all that, in the no-deadlines-and-almost-no-work situation I totally turned myself into a hedgehog, who is lost and feels like "let the river take me wherever it should. I shall float". With no desire to wake up every morning and no desire to fall asleep every evening. My days were turning into rounds of senseless activities pretending to follow certain goals with no plans whatsoever.
So, people dare say 18-hour working day and no sleep make us less productive? My bet. I finally had all the time in the world and unexpectedly had no willingness (or willpower?) to use it properly.
But, wait a minute, what is properly? I mean, you can use your time properly if you know what is the plan for tomorrow. If you know you have to learn how to read because tomorrow you go to school. If you know you need to pass your exams because tomorrow you go to the university. If you know you need to study hard because tomorrow is your thesis defense.
But what if you first just have to decide what is going to happen tomorrow? I have lots of understandings, desires (hardly passionate) and clear feelings - you will never be able to predict what the future holds so it is prcatically senseless to try to adjust to it right now. Society no longer tells you "this is the path to go, follow me". You are a free-floater in the river of the future. My foresights taught me to see no point in distant-future foresighting. While my family, my society, my common sense tell me it's high time that I made a roadmap of my future and started moving in this fog.
People used to speak about quarter-life crisis. They said it was going to reveal itself in the lack of options to apply yourself (Pechorin-style) - say, you have no experience and no unconsciousness so the big play is not for you yet. Oh, my goodness, no! This quarter-life crisis is about seeing too many opportunities and about the fear - holy fear of the most-deciding-decisions. About life-long decisions (what can be longer?). And about enormously big world to place this decisions in. About the 99% chance to get lost.
One recently-read article gave the embodiment to my holy fear which I could not define yet myself: "In your youth, you will make choices that will define you. The disciplines you begin now will be with you for the rest of your life."
OMFG. I don't really know what I want to do in 10 years (really, I checked it with myself, I only look forward 2-3 years, no more, further on white charming fog is shining). I don't know which disciplines I will need to do something that I don't conceive of yet. I don't know how to chose them, finally.
Well, all this philosophy and tear-jerking unclear sentenses are about unwillingness (or the lack of willpower?) to take crucial decisions that demand hell lot of work - personal, emotional, mental and even physical work. This is all about choosing (and even more about finding) the University to apply, about crafting a masterpiece of your CV and cover letters, about passing the exams I have never heard of. It is something about so subtle that frightens me like devil.
Because it is all about having no idea what is going on. All my life I saw the track so clearly and could easily point the goals. But here the big and fair play begins. I have billions of roads to go while before I had dozens only to chose between (oh, damn this free choice!). This fear is not about your intellectual, emotional or financial survival - I am pretty sure I am capable of providing myself with knowledge, emotions and money. It's the first time about having no idea on how this all is going to happen further on. This is really the first time ever I am floating in the river and fog and I am not really sure the river will on its own carefully take me to the bank of the University and the degree. I mean the question "why I need a bank like this and not any other bank (like job, for instance)?" is already answered by me pretty consciously. But I'm afraid of "not_my_bank", "not_my_time" and "not_my_choice".
Now comes a little idyllic explanation of why I see it this way:
For the recent time I tried so hard to perceive and hug what life had generously proposed: friends, activities, jobs or even languages to learn and I guess I pretty much succeeded in listening to myself and filtering what I really like and what I really need. I learned not to fight for something, which I used to do before seeing the Universe as a huge battlefield. I learned to perceive with gratitude after certain efforts paid. But the University and the faculty choice is little bit different, as I see it right now - it's not going to pop up just like that, it is going to be something you have to fight for again. And this is the concept I almost managed to forget because I try to perceive life as an act of love not as an act of fight or violence. And I have to recollect in memory - how was that - to fight for something you really want. Or maybe one first has to consciously understand if he or she really wants this. This is one of the discrepancies in the current situation and one of the reasons for the holy fear - I don't know how to make myself start the fight .
Who knows maybe now it's a level up - a new complicated task of learning to fight with love which is a bit more sophisticated than just fighting or just loving. Maybe first I will have to fall in love with something I have to fight for. I hope this will make my flight and my love more conscious
Becoming a prisoner of the "If" castle somewhere in the mountains between the bookshelves and Internet with coffee, wine and chocolate I first wanted to escape my sort of mental prison with no people around me. This gave me an uncomfortable feeling of being completely lost but it's only now that I realized - it opened me the biggest Universe I ever thought of. The Universe of enormously big world around me and the Universe of my own smallest creature ever. It feels so good to be small again - in the ego-centered love towards myself I almost forgot the feeling.
It's an amazing feeling to understand again that the world is large enough. This terrible self-centered feeling used to tell me I could understand the scale of the world and know how to deal with the wisdom of the Universe and can predict the path I have to go through (or, to be more precise, predict the narrowness of each and every path).
Opening the Internet and opening the bookshelves with no hurry after many years of haste, opening close people on the wildest distance I realize how narrow-minded I was. This little artificial exile made me reunderstand that I will never be able to embrace all the knowledge, wisdom, beauty and love of the world but it's still worth trying and it's a very early young but beautiful feeling I want to share with you.
Self-centered life with no certain deadlines was something I definitely urged subconsciously. How happy I am that it happened to me and now, and when the time of the "exile" is almost over, I finally see the willingness (or the willpower?) to overcome my holy fear of not knowing nor where to go neither how to start.
To be brief (as brief as it is possible in this entry), this life-turning decisions are (as I understand it now) no more life-turning than all the previous ones, including the choice of toys, hobby clubs and friends. Not a single event can miraculously turn you into the person you are going to remain for the rest of your life. It is practically impossible, because if you are not Chekhov's "Man-in-the-case" you will always be evolving and changing. Moreover, for something to change your life dramatically, you should have the accumulated background and have to be prepared.
Thus I solemnly declare I am not afraid of helping the river to take me to my bank and promise I will be following only the things I love on the journey through this horribly big, deep and fast river.
Sincerely yours,
Hedgehog.