Prompt: Write about you think we fear the most…. yet write from experience. Split us and you wide open. The secrets that aren’t being heard.

I think the greatest fear is that of annihilation. Throughout the course of our lives, loss of control and loss of what is so often given and readily available is constantly terrifying. For instance, darkness one of the simplest templates for uneasiness because we can no longer rely on our eyes to tell us what is there. And when, after a moment of sitting in a chair in one position, the pins-and-needles tingle our foot to a stump of numb energy, we fear for our bodies and our mobility. Obviously, we are cautious about our physical safety in a much greater realm as well but I think the real fear is of losing that which we can come to claim as being so sacred and unchanging. When I wake up in the morning, I open my eyes to look out from this common axis of perceptual proxy into the world. This experience is so common that it is subliminal and habituated. My body has a certain weight and way of contorting itself with gravity that I become accustomed to and develop an authority in orienting and guiding. If anything were to change in this context, I would not know how to be…I would have to find a new way.

That is not the truest fear, though. The real fear is the thought that someday somehow all of this could disappear forever. That thought terrifies me to the core.

Another great fear stems from the acceptance that another person might seriously harm us without any regard. I think what I fear most about this is not the process of being harmed, but the possibility in the human condition that someone could harm without remorse….that the vitality of human life could be ignored.

And in that sense, I think we also fear solidarity. It is so hard to fill one’s own presence. It can be delightful, but in the end we want to share, express, give, and cultivate…with someone. I cannot imagine a life without a striving for this form of connection with another human being.