2 minute read
The Powerful Weakness of Fear
The Powerful Weakness of Fear
He woke up with a sudden start, possessed by a feeling of petrifying anxiety, disproportionate to the nature of the worry. He thought he had missed his alarm clock going off. After checking the time, a smooth wave of warm relief consumed his whole body, making him shiver. Nevertheless, his heartbeat was still agitated. Fear brought his body to an upright position, putting his feet on the floor one by one. His dark hair was fluffed after restless sleep. His tired, red eyes were penetrating and cold, as if made of glass. He had regular facial features atop a figure that was quite tall and thin, with angular joints. Suddenly, one was struck by the realisation that he was, in fact, quite handsome. Nevertheless, no one would call him attractive; his mannerisms, facial expressions, and sagging posture all created a sense of unwelcoming closedness that would never permit it.
From the first glance he seemed committed and rational - a perfect example of conservative masculinity. But that was all superficial. If one looked closely enough, one could notice his little nervous ticks and anxious glances, as of a teenager who, after shoplifting in a local grocery store, imagines himself a conspiring criminal, scrutinised by every passer-by. Fear himself was conscious of such peculiarities of his own character and therefore considered them controllable and thus unimportant. Their root, however, lay in nothing other than the knowledge of their essence that Fear possessed. Fear knew everything about himself. He was always scared, for he knew everything about what being scared is. And, since it has been known for millennia that the more one knows the less one understands, Fear always lived with a constant and imperishable feeling of despair. His view of life was very fatalistic; for him, as long as an individual human being was inevitably mortal, it was never alive. Fear was born a dead man.
The only thing that motivated him to put his shirt and trousers on this morning after having brushed his teeth and washed his face, was the idea of the importance of his unique mind. He was delighted with the thought that everything in the world acquired meaning only after it had been subjected to human intelligence. Therefore, he, being human, was not a dead man. He was omnipotent. There was a word in epistemology for that, but Fear forgot what it was. Although, in all fairness, neither did he care. With this narcissistic attitude he resumed his life. The man that could not even sleep peacefully at night-time, lived in a world of his own delusions and pretended that he was the centre of the universe during the day.
