Sometimes I wonder if paperwork is a form of black magic.
I understand that sometimes collecting information might be neccesary for certain things to function, but there seems to be an extra level of dread attached to most paperwork.
What is that dread?
A deep seated fear of chaos
The desire to fit things into categories
We want to understand
We are desperate to understand
To create order in our lives
I understand. My room has way too much stuff to ever really feel clean, and so much of it is needed and so much of it isn’t but it doesn’t just belong to me.
The world is even more chaotic than my room. So the desire to keep it neat and orderly makes sense to me, but at what cost?
How much are we willing to let the fun be squeezed out of life just for a sense of predictability?
If we try too hard to control the future, the collateral damage is purpose and passion.
What are we so afraid of?
I recently finished a game that I had been meaning to play for years and the timing was perfect. It was about just this topic, that keeps popping up all over. I won’t say the name of the game because I am going to spoil the ending and if I don’t tell you which game it is then I’m not spoiling it for the 0.0001 of you who might play it.
Halfway through the game we realize the organization that split the world in two and forced everyone into war was different incarnations of out protagonists, the same people but from different universes where they made different choices and lived out different lives. Later we learn that fear if losing each other caused them to want control.
Even later when we meet the final boss who manipulated them into following such a path we learn he’s not a person at all, nor a monster or demon, he’s merely fear incarnate. When you face him head on he reveals himself to you as a reflection.
This ending itself was also a reflection, of the world we live in.
Fear leads to nothing but sadness and self betrayal.
I’m not talking about momentary instinctual fear that evolution gave us for self preservation. I’m talking about fear that persists in the absence of immediate danger, fear that influences our decision making when we aren’t running from a tiger or trying to survive a natural disaster or theatened by someone with a weapon.
Some fear is natural, but if we don’t feed it, it disappears when we are safe, at the very least when we have done all we can do and when all that’s left is to leave it to chance or to the will of the divine.
We feed fear with “what if’s” that we can’t do anything about, and by focusing on things that are out of out hands, and gravitating towards negativity. We feed fear every time we reject the present moment, and instead cling to the future or the past.
So now I don’t ruminate on what could happen anymore. I do everything I can do, and then I throw all leftover thoughts to the wind, knowing they won’t help at all. I throw those fears onto the fire constantly by doing the work. The work I know I need to do to build a foundation and protect myself, but more importantly the work I want to do to bring more love and excitement into the world.
There is nothing except for love and fear and at a certain level even these become one, but as long as we are in the flesh, we are free to choose the one we want to live by.
I have already decided and I will keep making the same decision, each and every moment.
The universe is constantly inviting you, all you need to do is say yes.
“To Know Where” by I+Everything MV
