Tag: people

Athazagoraphobia

Let’s start this off with a fact: In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin uses the word love ninety-five times. He uses the iconic phrase survival of the fittest just twice.

Take a moment and think about what you just read. And I mean really think about it. Let it settle in your mind. In a book that is widely recognised as being at the crux of the ideological divide between science and religion because of the writer’s notion that the development of the soul is a normal process of evolution, and not the the works of a divine being, he mentions the idea of love ninety-five times and natural selection as we perceive it only twice…

Twice. It’s mind boggling to learn that the concept that society believes to be the defining declaration of a body of work that sent a fucking firestorm through literature, science, and religion alike, is just a miniscule part of a larger knowledge of human evolution. Yet from a young age the idea of survival is bred into us; we work as individuals and in teams to win prizes or recognition. We align ourselves with strength and dispel those that we consider to be weak. And perhaps worst of all, we allow society to cultivate a belief that we are in constant competition with our fellow man and woman in our quest to be remembered and revered.

…Let’s rewind a little and start over. When I first started planning out this post it wasn’t supposed to sound like this. It was more of an expletive fuelled stab at societal flaws that capitalize on our insecurities and feed our fears. So, let’s add a little context and flesh this out some more…

That funny looking word at the top of the page has a very poignant meaning. Athazagoraphobia is the fear of forgetting; of being forgotten, replaced, or being ignored. The idea probably doesn’t seem too foreign to most readers. Unfortunately, thanks to civilization’s rather skewed modern day philosophies it is an illness that is threatening to consume the societal collectives and subcultures that define us. Someone recently wrote to me and asked what it felt like to be a social influencer. The question came from a brilliant young writer who has a great career ahead of him, and was delivered with the utmost sincerity. Yet while I should have been thrilled to be bestowed with such a title, it actually left me feeling cheap.

When I envision a social influencer I find myself conjuring up images of vanity and social media posts aimed at generating revenue for businesses through spamming newsfeeds with sponsored posts. Here’s me influencing in my new sweatpants. Here I am taking a photo of coffee, or food, or a whatever else. The product isn’t important. But the imbalance in our logic is. We equate the idea of influence with marketing and misconstrue the lines between being educated and informed, with merely being sold a product. An influencer should be someone who is stimulating creativity, or inspiring social change; not hindering individualism and authenticity by capitalising on society’s ever growing desire to be irreplaceable and unforgettable through slick marketing gimmicks.

There is a very big difference between a brand ambassador and a social influencer; or at least there should be. Because marketing and purpose driven content has its place, but our cultural inability to distinguish between the two can have damaging repercussions to our mental and societal health. The idea that we should be persuaded to not only consume, but to compete in doing so, can lead to feelings of isolation, frustration and depression. We shouldn’t be forced to feel as though we are in competition to out consume and out replicate the influencers that we aspire to. The result of this logic is that we become miserable drones blinded by own desire to maximise self interest that we can no longer see the beauty and value of the people that we see as our rivals.

Alright. Let’s get back to Darwin and the battle between love and survival.

I dream of the day where I can refer to myself as a social influencer. I really do. As a writer there a few thrills more rewarding than knowing that the workings that you have produced have the power to inspire the reader. But I want don’t want to encourage my readers to compete or consume. I want to inspire them to be great; not in the bullshit sense of greatness that is pushed upon us on a daily basis either. I don’t want people to believe that my vision of greatness has anything to do with money, or power or status. All that crap is just superficial nonsense that is keeping you distracted and diverting attention away from what is really important.

My vision of greatness is more akin to happiness. It is a life filled with love and contentedness. It is having a heart free from angst and anxiety, an open mind, and an understanding that we are all connected. We aren’t in competition with one another; we never have been. It’s just a bullshit lie that we have been spoon fed for so long now that we are actually beginning to believe it . We don’t need to subscribe to the philosophy of survival of the fittest. We need to practise love and human compassion instead. By doing so, we will find a happiness that will render any fear of being forgotten and replaced obsolete.

I spent years suffering from a form of athazagoraphobia; I have always been riddled by anxiety and depression. One of my greatest fears is that when I die, I will simply cease to exist and will eventually be forgotten. This phobia is one of the many reasons that I write. I want to be happy. I want to love, and to be loved. Yet for so long I thought that happiness would come through being the best. Just like so many others I misconstrued the idea of greatness with being better than the people that I believed myself to be in competition with. I spent years convinced that if I pushed myself  to become the best writer in existence, then people would have to love and remember me. But I was wrong.

It wasn’t until just recently when I stumbled upon the fact that opened this post that I realised that the only person I need to be great in comparison to is the person that I was yesterday. If I love, I will be loved. And if I focus on inspiring my fellow man rather than competing against them, I will touch them and I will be remembered not as the greatest writer that ever lived; but as the greatest version of me that I could have ever been. If following this logic makes me a social influencer in some respect; then I will take pride in the title bestowed upon me.

Suicide Season

‘Ignoring your passion is slow suicide. Never ignore what your heart pumps for.’

  • Kevin Claiborne

Let’s play a game of Russian Roulette.

You and I are seated at a table in a smoke filled room; there’s an old six shooter positioned perfectly between us with a single round floating in one of its chambers. The heavy aromas of mildew and fear cling to your skin causing you to perspire. We’re alone. There’s no one here to save us; the only entrance to the cell is destined to remain locked until only one of us remains. You’re scared. So am I. Our lives have been reduced to this moment where we’ll play a game of chance to see who survives. Nothing else matters right now. It’s just you and I.

There’s a coin beside the gun. We’ll flip to see who shoots first. I pick it up and use my thumb to send it spinning through the air. You call heads. It lands tails side up. I shoot first. I pick up the gun, spin the barrel and stare you dead in the eye. It’s nothing personal. We just lucked out you and I. Our only chance of survival is to have the six shooter’s hammer strike home while the weapon sits in the palm of our hand.

My arm lengthens as I draw down on you. Time slows. Your blood thickens in your veins, your heart rate triples in a desperate attempt to push it through your body. Your hands are clammy. You’re freezing despite the humidity in the room. What do you think about in this moment of absolute fear? What decisions do you live to regret? How many passions were left wanting before you found yourself locked in a room with an irrational writer and a gun?

The answer should be none. We should be living every day to the fullest. Regret should be just a word in the dictionary. But it never is. We humans are creatures of hindsight; we are forever bound to look back at moments and note missed opportunities and failures.

Did you fail to chase your dreams? Or tell your lover how much they mean to you? Were you disappointed that you didn’t invest in those risky shares that ultimately paid huge dividends? No matter what you thought of in your moment of fear you did have regrets. At some point you settled for something other than your true passions and now when your life flashed before your eyes you wished you’d never been so foolish.

You ignored your passions and committed slow suicide. The final scene of your self-sabotage was merely a crazed writer with a gun. Every single sacrifice you had made prior to you and I being locked in a room was what lead you there.

It’s a loaded statement I know. To say that you are committing this form of slow suicide is sure to anger some; and it should. When Kevin Claiborne coined the expression he wasn’t trying to make his audience feel good. He was trying to piss them off. He wanted readers to sit back from their desk, or rise from their armchair and say, “Screw this guy. I’ll show him who’s ignoring their passions.” He wanted anger and emotion. He wanted you to rise and stop settling for less than you deserve. So do I.

It’s why I locked us in that damn room. It’s why I put a busted old six-shooter on the table and told you there was a single round in the chamber. It’s why I ground back the hammer so that the round would never fire. I don’t want to kill your dreams. I want to piss you off to rouse you from your slumber so that you actually start chasing them.

The only thing standing between you and your dreams is the excuses and sacrifices you keep making. You’re comfortable and I get that. I am too. But this state of comfort is suicide season for anyone who dreams of becoming something more. My comfort comes in working a cushy job where I earn a decent wage for doing very little. I could sit here for the rest of my life and allow the flames of my passion to die. I could let the momentum with my writing fade until all that’s left is stone cold ashes of what could have been. Or I can douse the flames of creativity in petrol and watch it burn brighter than ever.

It’s easy to ignore a passion and to deny your heart the opportunity to accomplish what it pumps for. But to do so is a travesty; it is to commit emotional and creative suicide. Think back to those moments of fear when you were staring down the barrel of that shitty old six-shooter. Think of the regrets that haunted you. Remember that spike in your pulse as you fretted over an end that you knew was ultimately inevitable. Do you want to look back on your life and shudder at the comfort you achieved by allowing passions to die? Or do you want to be someone who set the world ablaze and turned a passion and a dream into a reality.

Commit emotional suicide, or step outside your comfort zone and follow your dreams. The choice is yours. You wouldn’t play Russian Roulette with an unstable writer and a loaded gun unless you had no other choice. So why do we actively chose to do so with our dreams?

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