The new epoch has begun

So, henceforward, you will find me here: kalestcloud.wordpress.com.

Fear, and That Which Comes After

Not everyone gets to experience real fear. To be so uncertain whether the next day will still come. To be in the dark as to what happens in the next moment.

While I have touched it once, I know what I have experienced isn’t the epitome of fear. Neither was it my own personal greatest fear, nor is it the world’s. It was but a glimpse of what can be much worse.

I can’t pretend to know what I fear most. However, I know for a fact that such a night was not what it is. Nevertheless, that night did happen.

We all had to move on from that event. There was nothing else to do. While we all might have brought a shadow of it with us, we had to realise that something had to come after it.

One of them, something that can grow from fear: courage.

I don’t exactly know what it is, but I once heard someone say:

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important that fear.”

I didn’t readily believe him then. Of course, he was merely reciting lines from a script adapted from a book. Somehow, the words rang true but, at the same time… Something else.

Haven’t we always been taught that those with real courage are the fearless ones? They live and walk the world bravely for they are not afraid of anything. They are able to move and breathe freely for they know that they can conquer anything that comes their way.

They fear nothing.

Now, I couldn’t say the same. The things we are taught are rarely the ones that we can live with in this world. We have to learn the better part ourselves and learn them fast before the world can take us.

As I recall that fateful night from a year ago, I have come to the realisation that true courage, indeed, does not mean the absence of fear. Those who fear nothing can never be truly brave.

Perhaps, all they could ever do is live in the illusion of fearlessness.

I can’t call myself truly courageous. Not just yet. I stumble and fall and cower. However, now I can truly say that the admission, acknowledgement and acceptance of fear is the beginning of courage.

What comes after will never be for me to decide, but I know it will be for the better.

Quoted from The Princess Diaries

Have to, Need to, Want to

I used to think that the desires of humans can only be one of two things: want or need. Those two, and nothing else.

However, as I continue to live and learn, I’ve come to realise that, as with many other things which people expect there to be only two things, there is a third kind: have.

This have doesn’t speak of ownership of a particular object. Otherwise, there wouldn’t exist any form of desire for such.

This have speaks of an external force compelling a person to do or obtain something. Which means, this is done mostly out of a lack of free will^*.

On the other hand, those things that people want to do are motivated by internal desires. They are created and driven from within. They are rooted on free will^*.

The needs are those which straddle the line between the have and the want. Needs speak of necessities which humans cannot live without: air, water, food…

Forget Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In today’s world, this theory is arguably obsolete.

Needs are motivated by an internal compulsion. They are those which are done out of a force from within which compels a person to action. It is internal and yet it is a compulsion.

Ultimately, haves are those which a thinking person would never want to be subjected under for humans, throughout the ages, have shown that they always think as if the world should bend to their will. Or at least, that’s what thousands of years of history written with war in just about every page tells.

In the end, though, people are always compelled, unable to do anything besides what the world around them dictates. Most continue to live under the fantasy that they are personally responsible for all their actions and no one can tell them anything.

The fair few, the victorious, are those who have learnt to accept circumstance, known the words to make the rhyme, and danced to the song of the spirit of the world.

* Free will is, of course, as I have surmised is what we call this particular illusion. https://kairoskale.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/truth-simple-truth/