Tag: thoughts

Thanatophobia

‘This is hell. You bought a candle to burn?’
-Keith Buckley.

I’ve been thinking about my own morality a lot lately. I’ve had a pretty frustrating case of writers block and whenever I do I start to contemplate the space in time I’ll occupy between birth and death. I get caught up in a mindset of frustration and start thinking about the choices I’ve made, opportunities I’ve missed, and how I will spend the moments I’m still yet to experience. To be frank, I hate when I get like this. I’m fucking petrified of growing older and knowing that I’ll one day kick the bucket causes my anxiety levels to skyrocket until my heart is hammering in my chest and I become short of breath.

I guess a large part of the anxiety I experience comes from the fact that I feel as though I still have so much I want to accomplish in my life. I am forever working against my biological clock to achieve my goals before death wraps his talons around my heart and squeezes until it becomes still. I want to be successful writer and make a career out of what I do. I want to see the world. I want to be loved, loathed and revered. And I want to know that when I’m a rickety old man with a busted hip, gruff tone and permanent scowl, that I’ve lived a good life and made a positive impact on those that I leave behind.

I’m trying to leave a legacy of words. Through my writing I want to create something worthwhile that allows me to reach out and connect with people. In reality I’m a pretty emotionally stunted individual. I keep even my closest friends at a safe distance, and while I’ll protect those that I care about till the bitter end, I rarely feel the need to reach out for their help. But through writing I can be vulnerable and I can be beautiful. In a weird kind of way I’m liberated in my madness through writing. Even my closest friends tell me that they read this site on the regular as a way of understanding me.

So I’m frightened of death. It’s occupying my thoughts and stressing me out. I’m suffering from writers block and stuck in a hellish state of frustration. So what can a writer do when they’re in hell? Bring a candle to burn. Turn up the heat ever so slightly and make the inferno their own.

Yep, after a brief hiatus from the world of my character Jason Dark, I’ve started penning my way through a follow up to Midas. It’s a tale that will undoubtedly focus on the idea of death. Ruin and woe are central themes that I’m trying to explore quite heavily in the four book story-arch and having the ability to do so allows me to further immerse myself into a mindset that both troubles and inspires me. I’m afraid of dying. It’s my hell. So why not create a story that gives me the ability to really engage with the concept and overcome the hell within me?

The way I see it is this: I’m pretty lucky. Every single person on this earth has some form of fear or phobia that has the ability to leave them crippled with anxiety or worse. The fact that I fear growing old and failing to carve my name into the sands of this earth seem to fail on comparison to the afflictions of others. I have a unique opportunity to use my fear to create not only wonderful art, but a beautiful life. I can use my fear to propel myself towards success.

Fear is hell. But fear is also easily overcome; you’ve just got to be prepared to embrace it. If you’re stuck in hell make sure you’ve got a candle to burn. Take ownership of the very place designed to break you and make your hell a place you can thrive in.

If you’re afraid of death; explore it.
If you’re afraid of change; embrace it.
And if you’re afraid of fire; light and candle and learn to control the fear that binds you.

If you do that you can set yourself free. For me right now that freedom comes from my newfound lease on life and from shaking off this frigging writers block and get back to what I do best: writing. I have the ability to create hell through my literature and I take solace in knowing that my protagonist is arrogant enough to embrace it, light a candle and turn up the heat ever so slightly. And if a product of my imagination can be so brazen, surely I can too.

If you spend your whole life fearing death, you may as well already be dead. Step into the inferno you fear and set it alight. Set yourself free.

The wolf you feed

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

It turns out that I’ve been feeding the wrong wolf for a long, long time. In my haste to transcend beyond my own limitations as an author and man, I starved the wrong damn wolf and allowed the other to grow fat with the spoils of a one sided war. I’ve always seen myself as different from my fellow man, and I always will. But for a time I thought that because of this altered perspective I needed to fuel my creativity with an abundance of anger, greed, arrogance and resentment. I pushed myself to become a real arsehole because I thought that if I wanted to be more than I currently am I had to really drive home that disconnect between myself and society as a whole. I didn’t just want to be an eccentric and offensive writer. I wanted to redefine what it meant to be different. I wanted people to begrudgingly admire the bastard that I had become.

Jesus, didn’t I mess that up…

I mean what kind of moron not only feeds the wrong wolf but actively goes out of his way to hinder the better angel of his nature? I may as well have pinned the compassionate wolf to the damn floor and exposed his jugular. I’m talking in riddles I know. So let me just say this: I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of pushing others away. And I’m damn tired of actively going out of my way to become that disgruntled, reclusive writer stereotype who is a real arrogant piece of work. You may have noticed that my blogging has been more regular as of late, more focused too – and it’s purely because I’ve learned that feeding the wolf of pure evil has bought me nothing but frustration and heartbreak. So I’ve changed tact, and now I’m focusing more on the beauty in this world and as a result my mind is clearer than it has ever been.

What bought about this change? Well, it’s a long and complicated story made up of many complexities and variables, so much so that I’m not even sure that I understand it myself. So let’s simplify it and say that I starved the compassionate wolf for so long that it did what any other frightened animal would do: it came out fighting. With nothing left to lose and a whole world of inspiration to gain, that sickly side of my heart and mind that I had left neglected limped onto the battlefield and faced off against a stronger wolf comprising of twisted intentions and idiotic arrogance, and kicked its fucking arse. The hatred in me had grown complacent and weak, leaving both itself and me totally vulnerable to a hostile takeover.

But this isn’t the end of my two wolves and their fighting. It’s a never ending battle, just as the old Cherokee told his grandson. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. Life is sempiternal. So while right now the compassionate wolf reigns supreme in my mind, the wolf of pure evil has slunk away to lick its wounds and plan its next attack. But unlike my past where I actively fueled the bastard in me, I’m learning to let it fend for itself. That’s not to say that I will starve him though. Because if my current brevity has taught me anything it’s that an animal with nothing left to lose is too powerful to ignore. I’ll always be jealous of the writer who strikes it rich while I still toil away at my manuscripts. That’s human nature, and nothing to be ashamed of. But I will no longer actively feed those negative thought processes. That jealousy will be a result of respect, not abhorrence and hate.

Life really is a beautiful thing, and to be blessed with the gift to breathe a second life to it through literature is something that I will cherish until the end of time. So while I was once fueled by the bitter wolf of greed and hate, wanting only to transcend beyond the man that I am now; I now want to create something that transcends beyond myself and becomes an entity unto itself. I don’t want to be an overzealous and aggressive genius anymore. I simply want to be the man who fell in love with the world and used that inspiration to make beautiful literature.

%d bloggers like this: