More Life

What's past is prologue, what's to come in yours and my discharge.

Shakespeare
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Hello Sienna
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I have been writing and posting entries in this Vagabond Journey for many years. (Don't believe what it says in the side bar. It's been more years than that. I don't know how to change it yet.) There are about 1,400 entries not counting Vagabondisms, all of them original documents of my own musings and devising. And what does it all mean?

I am not one to moan about years gone by. I would rather look forward than back. That's the only healthy thing to do. But it is easier to look ahead when your young, there are less anchors to weigh.

The recent traumatic experience of lies and betrayal by a friend, which can only be explained as some sort of insanity, has left me sad and frightened, sad over the loss of friendship and frightened because it has the hint of a last chance gone, with no further life or love to know. That's the kind of suffocating fear only an older person can know.

I look back at some of the vagabond journeys I've been on and I can read a lesson of growing, learning, turning experiences into metaphors for life, finding light in the dark places and not giving up.

I think fear is our worst enemy. That's been said before by wiser men than I, but it is a fundamental truth. Fear of failure keeps people from trying. Fear of loss keeps people holding on to things they should let go of. I've recently seen paranoia turn a man into an enemy of everyone around him. Fear of death is a constant in some people's lives. But even worse is the fear that there is nothing more to live for, that there is no future, that the past is all there is. It is a frightening thing to consider. It's like being entombed without light and without human contact but being kept alive anyway. Fear of having nothing to look forward to.

I am facing up to this fear right now.

The Bible says "Where there is no vision, the people perish." (Proverbs 29) And there is the answer to what happens to many and how to fight against it. A few days ago I wrote an entry entitled "Worthy Life" and in it I said "Only the man or woman who is willing to look at themselves with stern objectivity can measure aright the person they see and thus compare it with the person they could be. To change, to improve, to become better than yourself is a noble task for the benefit of yourself."

But one can't just arbitrarily decide to be someone or something, can one?. Along with the fear of death or fear of aloneness comes the danger of the feeling of futility and despair, of being trapped, the loss of enthusiasm and excitement about life. Making some choice about the future may not be the best choice but it will open up the thought to being led to a better choice and once enthusiasm lights the fire there's a vision, there's a future, there's more life to live.

Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up