as old as your fear

You are as young as your faith,
as old as your doubt;
as young as your self-confidence,
as old as your fear;
as young as your hope,
as old as your despair.

When the wires are all down
and all the innermost core of your heart
is covered with the snows of pessimism
and the ice of cynicism,
then you are grown old indeed.



-- Samuel Ullman

the tinge of doubt ...

I am the faceless

the nameless

the timeless

the ageless ...

I am the tinge of doubt in the back of your mind,

the panic attack waiting around the corner,

the bomb, just waiting to drop on your world ...

I am fantasy,

reality,

and insanity

I am fear

[click on image to enlarge]

the greatest fear ...

Methinks the greatest fear we have is being ourselves. We want to be like everyone else, and we do what everyone else does -- even if it doesn't fit where and who you are.

You get nowhere that way. Your energy is weak and nobody pays attention to you. Because you're running away from the one thing that you own = WHAT MAKES YOU DIFFERENT AND UNIQUE.

Lose that fear, and you will feel the power you have by showing the world you don't care for being like other people. Lose that fear, and you will never go back.

the waiting room

In nooks all over the earth sit men who are waiting, scarcely knowing in what they are waiting, much less that they are waiting in vain.

Occasionally the call that awakens -- the accident which gives "permission" to act -- comes too late, when the best youth and strength for action has already been used up by sitting still; and many have found to their horror when they "leaped up" that their limbs had gone to sleep and their spirit had become too heavy.

"It is too late", they said to themselves, having lost faith in themselves and henceforth forever useless.



-- Nietzsche

our fear of old age ...

The dread, always,
of coming to this:

to sit
day after day
chain smoking
in a soiled undershirt
beside the cracked window
of a fifth-floor walkup
on Railroad Avenue
with stains on the wall,
dead flies on the sill,
no hot water,
and the cold water rusty



to sit
smoking and coughing
watching dust settle down,
freights rumble by,
and beyond the tracks
the river flowing
gray and tedious

while on the other,
the opposite, shore
the distant lights
of someplace else
rise up in a glory
more awesome than Rome
and now unreachable
as anyplace anywhere.



A Fear of Old Age by Jack Anderson

a year of FEAR NOTHING ...

2012 will be for me the year of FEAR NOTHING.

With the pervasive presence of the media and the visceral quality of its imagery, we are all given the feeling that we are living in a world that is filled with danger. And even though we live in a world that is infinitely more safer and more predictable than our ancestors ever knew, our fears and anxieties have only increased.

Fear infects our attitude towards life. We shift from feeling fear because of some perceived threat, to having a fearful attitude towards life itself. We come to see almost every event in terms of risk. We exaggerate the dangers and our vulnerability.

And deep on the inside, fear takes hold of our personal being. We are afraid of offending people, of stirring up conflict, of standing out from the crowd, of taking bold action. Our fears are, in effect, a prison that confines us within a limited range of thought, movement and action.

If there is one thing I have learnt over the past few years, it's that the less you fear, the more power you have, and the more fully you will live.

Nihil timendum est means "fear nothing". FEAR NOTHING is going to be my theme for 2012 -- on this blog, in my thoughts, and through my actions -- and I invite you to make it yours too ...

top 3 images courtesy of Banksy

LOVE in the time of Christmas ...

All human emotions are motivated at their deepest level by one of two emotions = fear or love.

Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards and harms.

Love is the energy which expands, opens up, send out, stays, reveals, shares and heals.

Fear wraps our bodies in clothing. Love allows us to stand naked.

Fear clings to and clutches what we have. Love gives all that we have away.

Fear holds close. Love holds dear.

a matter of experience ...

Babies are masters of trial-and-error learning. Which is why they fall repeatedly. They do it in a relaxed, almost confortable way, making it unlikely that they will be harmed. And sometimes they do hurt themselves.

Anxious, controlling parents, however, often induce shock or fear reactions in their children by communicating their own fear about what the baby is doing. "Oh my God! You'll hurt yourself" they exclaim as baby Jack starts his odyssey across the lawn.

And so, like a computer that has been programmed to believe "you'll hurt yourself", we believe this lie as we spend our whole lives avoiding trial-and-error learning, preferring instead to learn only from the stuff we read in textbooks, hear in the news, and are told by our parents and friends.

It is only the person who has had the experience of 'love' who knows what 'love' is. It is only the person who has experienced 'pain' who know what 'pain' is. It is only the baby who has tried to walk and fallen who knows what it means to fall, and to walk.

Your experience of life is the only basis for living your life, not what others tell you how. There is no other way. There is no other 'truth'.

the alien from inner space

So I'm on a Qantas flight to Adelaide, and this five year old girl draws a tattoo on my hand.

"What is it?" I ask her.

"A alien" she tells me.

"Wow!" I say. "And where does this alien live?" I ask her.

"Inside you" she replies.

subtle and profound

YUGEN

Yugen is a Japanese word that sits at the core of the appreciation of beauty and art in Japan. It values the power to evoke, rather that the ability to state directly.

Zeami Motokiyo, a 14th century Japanese actor and playwright, described yugen thus:

To watch the sun sink behind a flower-clad hill.

To wander on and on in a huge forest without thought of return.

To stand up on the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands.

To contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds.

All these are yugen. And i fucking love it! Methinks we could all do with a little more yugen in our every day.