Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Fear of the Unknown

  I've been going through a lot lately.  Consequently, I've had some anxiety.  Here and there though, something comes along to shine a little light on my path.  This morning, while I was on my way to class, and I happened upon a tiny plastic sombrero.  No big deal, right?  True, but a voice in my head told me that I would see another depiction of a sombrero before I reached a certain street.  This made me start to become aware of my surroundings as I drove along.
  I had almost reached the aforementioned street without finding what I was looking for, but there was a Mexican restaurant on the corner of the street with a painting of a sombrero on the wall.  I started to feel better.  The voice then told me to look for a depiction of a frog.  I was told that I would see one before I got to class.  I never did, but I realized what was going on.  This was my way of giving myself a way to distract myself from my current circumstances.  But it wasn't just a distraction like television or something useless like that.  It was a way for me to increase awareness of my surroundings.  Up until then, I had been obsessing over my troubles and letting the world around me pass me by unnoticed.  Now, I was observing everything around me.
  Here's why I gave this blog posting the title that I did.  This revelation about the distraction, got me thinking about what it is that has been causing me so much anxiety lately.  It is the fear of the unknown.  My future is entirely in question and there is nothing that I am sure of anymore.  What came to me though, is the fact that it is only into the unknown that you can interject your creativity.  What can you create about something that is already known?
  I mean, look at movies and TV these days and how they're just rehashing shows and movies from the past.  How creative is that?  It is only in the face of the unknown that you can exercise free will.  Like Doc Brown said in 'Back to the Future III', "You're future hasn't been written yet.  So make it a good one."  'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' said, "There's no fate but what we make for ourselves."  We can only have hope in the unknown. What hope is there in the known?  It's either good or bad, but it's known already.  The unknown can be good or bad as we choose.  Therefore, I choose never to fear the future anymore, but instead to have hope.  Only through gathering my bearings concerning my surroundings in the moment of now, in the present, will I have the awareness of where I am so that I know where I can choose to go from there.

No comments:

Post a Comment