The Unexamined Life

Jason: A constant theme continues to run through times when you are experiencing pain… you have a sense of “loss.”

Loss of Mom’s love with the birth of your brother…
Loss of personal security with the event where your blind spot was formed…
Loss of the kids in the fire…
Loss of relationship… fear to engage personal relationships because there is fear of potential loss…

I don’t know if any of this is real and it is certainly not meant in a negative manner… just curiosity about whether there is anything here around this idea of “loss.”

Sarano: It seems to me that you are getting warmer. Is not all fear, fear of loss. Is not all insecurity fear of the threat or loss of identity. Is not my identity itself based on fear, the fear that I am “I am Bad and I am Ugly”.

The part that goes unseen is that fear always derives it power from love. What is fear of pain but love of pleasure, what is fear of loss but love of gain…ultimately, to fear something you must love something.

Of course the most nasty little one of all, the one that creates all of these problems is “the fear of fear”. Without the fear of fear none of this would be a problem…it would just be. No for me fear is not just fear, fear is wrong, loss is wrong…the only thing that is not wrong is wrongness itself…of course this leaves me in the painful and predictable trap that says “it is wrong to fear”, in fact “it is wrong to be wrong”…”quickly Sarano we must hide these things or people might laugh at us” and so I go from fear of loss, to fear of fear, to fear of being wrong, to the fear of being embarrassed…so it all ends in shame and then I go hide and pretend as if nothing has happened or better yet overcompensate in some other area of my life…in fact, I think I am missing an important episode of some amazing reality television show even as I am writing this.

I feel you are close, very close, I feel you breathing down my neck…this is a good thing…let’s continue to look at ourselves for as Socrates says “the unexamined life is not worth living”.

24 comments April 20th, 2006 Sarano Kelley