FEAR

AREN’T YOU AFRAID

Where does your fear reside?

Is it vulnerability? Is it a fear of dismemberment? A fear of death?

What I fear is fear of not living. After so many years I have determined that the greatest loss is the loss of living, and not the loss of life. I am lucky to be born in the richest nation on the planet, even if I am not rich. We have everything at hand, everything at our disposal, and yet… so many of us remain trapped in our fears. When people learn I commute my mere six miles on a Vespa in Los Angeles, they ask me, “aren’t you AFRAID?”

But, dear readers, dear ones, aren’t you afraid of not LIVING? Not afraid of dying. Of not LIVING every moment given to you? Afraid of not experiencing as much as you can grab? Biting the vascularity out of each moment, sucking the marrow from the bone, à la Whitman?

I realize I have lived this way forever. And while it is imperfect, this manner of experience has served to provide me with joyous life and love and cutting dreadful anguish. And, why live, if not to feel?

AREN’T YOU AFRAID?