what is fear it's this expectation that the pain of yesterday is going to happen today what are schemas if not these rigid thoughts that I created in order to anticipate the Pains of one's yesterday of one's childhood this fear of dying alone of being alone of being unworthy it's always anticipatory convinced that I can somehow avoid it through hard work validation success or whatever I nonetheless feel that in the end it will all inevitably lead to the same results because these expectancies these results are based on the past a past I can barely recall let
alone alter I can't think myself out of this one it's it's this exhausting never- ending attempt to rationalize everything about myself like you know you keep sharpening a pencil it's eventually going to run out only then when I do all of this thinking do I think oh wow I've solved myself so I attach to ideas philosophies theories people half-baked images of a better me they fit into a logic they make sense and they give me a sort of security and when they're threatened that's where I feel the fear I act out of fear out of
desperation instead of confronting these fears going through them I go around them I avoid vulnerability I do not open up and so I do not let anyone in in the end I cannot love love and fear cannot coexist I fear myself and so I cannot love myself I didn't find myself in Patagonia in fact the whole trip was nothing more than the same old me doing the same old things in a new place but it gave me the false sense that I had this spectacle of interesting people interes places nonetheless left me unchanged one New
Yorker writer Likens travel to a boomerang it brings you right back to where you started yes I did begin to feel better and I feel much better now but this was only months after I realized that traveling all the way to the ends of the Earth wouldn't fix me a relationship wouldn't fix me Universal admiration wouldn't fix me and eventually I came to realize that nothing would fix me that's because this entire time I saw myself as a problem to be fixed to be solved to be reduced to a formula self-help books philosophies religions they
give me an objective answer to the question of who I should be there is something impersonal about this technique anyone can apply the formula embedded within its own cluster of genetics interactions experiences and social influence how could I possibly apply a generic answer answer to the deeply personal question of who I am being then is not a problem to be solved but rather a mystery to be experienced and only I can actively engage in this [Music] mystery I have lived a life in captivity an existence in which I have time and time again surrendered to
these abstractions these limits I've put on myself and this is why I was so miserable driven by fear bound to these ideas of who I am am in doing so I had neglected a sort of formless reflection involved in the present I had denied a receptivity to the world both externally and internally in the service of maintaining these rigid self-beliefs most of all I had denied myself a certain Unity with existence a Unity crucial in understanding this mystery I had become a slave to myself this captivity was apparent in my relationships I failed to open
myself up because I had locked myself into this idea of who I am an idea that I needed to retain in the hopes of solving myself and so I was never with someone truly I was always separate in the sense of hierarchy where I would see myself as Superior or inferior but I wasn't with them side by side I had denied myself the ability to truly be with someone as a friend or lover with each of us bonded by a fellowship larger than ourselves this could only happen if I freed myself if I opened myself
up to both give and be given to I must be strong enough to give and even stronger to ask for what I truly want my thoughts and schemas have directed my life to this point they themselves are driven by desire and fear by counterattacking and escaping I follow my desires and my fears I fear this I desire that but there's something else that has driven me I'm not sure what it is exactly but it's the whole reason why I made this it's the whole reason why I'm still here and I don't know if it's an
implicit part of human nature or an AC of choice and hey maybe it's a complete illusion [Music] it simply tells me that this is worth it in some sense I have faith that something good will come of this whatever this is I suppose I have faith in living still and still trying this is Marcel's idea of a strange hope hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being beyond all data beyond all inventories and all calculations a mysterious principle which is in connivance with me it is desire open-ended an act of patience
directed towards some form of Salvation without any say in what such salvation will look like it involves a commitment to humility which in other terms means a return to the present and the admission that I know very little about myself or others I you know people hold on to these images of father mother husband wife again for the same reason as they seem to provide some firm ground but there's no wife there what does that mean a wife a husband a son a baby holds your hands and then suddenly there's this huge man lifting you
off the ground and then he's gone where's that son all I know is that I don't actually know who I am and that is okay I never will in fact fact it is in those moments in in deep conversation in love face to face with beauty those moments where I've entirely lost myself where who I am no longer matters a simple thought flashes this is enough
