Friday, 31 July 2009

A journey – part two

The abyss from the edge and the deep

In my first mail to the mermaid I talked to him of Soeren Kierkegaard applied to contemporary life: sometimes we feel like we're standing at the edge of an abyss within our minds. We know we have to leap into the deep to achieve that transition in life we strive for. Whether it's dealing with a childhood trauma or starting a new career or education, it may seem like a terrifying huge step where everything can go bad in an instant. When you're standing there on the edge, staring into that abyss of unknown occurrences, every rational thought seems to drift out of your head, leaving only the panic behind, the thought of all the bad things that might happen; thoughts of your inevitable doom. Kierkegaard enters this picture with his thoughts on faith. He says believing is like throwing yourself into a thousand fathoms of water. The abyss in my mind is these thousand fathoms of water. The more faith you have, the more likely you would be to take that leap into the unknown.

A side note on this is that the first mail from the mermaid felt like going over such an edge without even knowing it was there. I spent 15 minutes reading his confessions, and it felt like falling, losing the grip on my life without even knowing that there was any edge in the proximity of my life at that point.

The abyss can, however, consist of much less romantic aspects of life; for instance going on a journey on your own and suddenly realizing the thousands of things that might go wrong; the thoughts of travel doom!

The thing about these abysses of the mind is that once you have taken that leap and you are in the middle of it, you tend to find peace again. I found this after 2 hours on the train. Suddenly I could not understand what could possibly have been so scary about the trip. I was calm and actually enjoying the trip; I am actually quite capable of taking the train on my own; plus my IQ is more than sufficient when it comes to reading the departure tables. Sometimes it seems so silly, the things you were afraid of before embarking on them. But whether your concerns turn out to be valid or not, once you are within the thousand fathoms of water, we all seem to manage somehow. It might seem terrifying before we start and we may look back on an abyss we've already crossed and find the journey through it unbearable, but it seems we rarely realize this while we are in it.

In the physical world, objects appear smaller when viewed from afar, but the nature of mental abysses seem to be reversed to this, they seem to be bigger seen from afar than they really are when you are fighting the masses of water as they may come. Still, it would be a shame not to admire the people that take their abysses on and without hesitation leaps over edge after edge in striving for new experiences or a better way of living. They have faith. Faith in themselves, in life and in other people; they will not be stopped by thoughts of doom. I like these people and want to be one one day!

The mermaid, however, never got this idea. He turned me into an object he could hold on to in the abyss. I think a most important feature of every journey over an edge is that if you do it on your own without relying on others as the ones to show you the way or act as a safety net, then and only then will you emerge from the deep stronger than you were before. I may praise independency too highly, because it might also just make me isolated, proud and frustrating to be around. But I do like myself better, when I go there without a safety net and make my own way through.

To sum things up:

  • My journey went smoothly
  • Both friends are delightful company
  • Optimism should always be the new black to me
  • Walking the mermaid's streets makes him forever present in my mind


 

No comments:

Post a Comment