I have never been one for living life vicariously. To some extent, I have chosen to lead a rather circumscribed existence. I do confess to having a predilection for the rôle of observer — it is always more delightful.
It is not necessarily that i am indifferent to the world. Just yesterday I felt revolt upon seeing a photo depicting an injured boy with his afflicted mother to his right, another victim of the continuous wave of bombings that form a backdrop to quotidian life in the land between two rivers. When will this horror stop? Enough is enough!
I care; I simply refuse to show it.
One day, a ladybug landed on my palm. As its tiny marauding legs made their way across my flesh, I felt rapture and I could not pull myself together, horribly constumed of a sudden by a fit of uncontrollable laughter. I was ecstatic and the world trembled, shook off its foundation. For an instant I experienced love — I was part of the world. My convulsions testified to it.
The whimsical creature flew off, the eternity having transpired in four seconds, into the distance; it was forever lost. But I did not wallow in lamentation, instead I removed my shoes and socks and walked upon the estival verdure.
There is a thin line between saint and sinner; to a large extent they are one in the same. After all, the heretic is not the transgressor but the weaker party. And for his weakness he is brutally condemned.
I no longer am shocked by the carnal pleasure I experience when I walk barefoot. Sometimes the scadal arises from a fear that it can lead into the instantiation of what one is in all actuality, but is hidden within the façade of what is prim and proper — i.e., what is civilised and therefore accepted.
To a large extent, some of us are afraid of being ourselves. Why? for fear of not being accepted, of being turned away and being shunned.
Life does not happen overnight, it is a slow and sometimes painful phenomenon.
I am not — as far as I am aware — afraid of being myself. What I have feared is having others impose their ideas of what I am or should be upon me. And from whence arises the strife, the motor of life.