Living & Dying

Whilst many people may come to fear the idea or even the reality of their mortality. Yes, many people fear death. And for those that don't fear death, they fear for the things and the loved ones they leave behind, that it may fall into the torment of decay without them being around. But I tell you, I do not fear death, and I do not fear for the things I leave behind...But I fear for the things I leave unsaid, for the dreams that I never lived, and for the nothingness I leave behind... No, I don't fear death. What I fear happens everyday, sometimes many times a day...What I fear is dying.

I fear the little deaths each day, and the slowly dying and decay. The parts of me I've had to bury, and the sacrifices for each day. I mourn the loss of the innocence in child-like fun, and for the six-foot trenches that memory had made. The wilting of compassion that once blossomed for each spring of appreciation, and the nonchalant lending of a hand.

I dread the gravestones that stood in my way, reminding me of cherished passions.  The stone-cold stark remarks of their bitter and unwelcome engravings, echoing the miseries of my lives long ago laid down to rest.

I curse the miscarriages of my dreams, my passionate achievements which could have soared to greatness. Like tumours, already dead parts of me, forced to be extracted and cut from my life.

But most of all, much worse than the long-drawn tragedy of dying, I fear the four walls of a glorified cage, like a tomb built for the living who are placed there slowly to die. For no matter how big or how small, what manner of material make up it misshapen bars, or the luxury of it's habitat...A cage is still a cage, and just another word for a coffin. No, I do not fear death, I fear the pieces and stages of my life...slowly...dying.

The Anti-hero

Is it truly possible that something with such profound meaning, such poetic sense and such heroism in its history, can be reduced to nothing more than just empty words echoing through the overwhelming silence of loneliness, but motivated by what appears to be more duty rather than sincerity? How is it then possible that such heroism is turned to nothing more than a pedestrian thought? The answer is simple...The answer is clear. But the answer is not always the truth that we're willing to face, because it's reality is too far from the fantasy we naively created all by ourselves.

In Shakespeare, we learn that bringing down the face of a hero, is as simple as pointing out its flaws. This does not make him an antagonist...no, it makes him less than what we thought before. It simply makes them an anti-hero, the kind of hero with no heroic qualities of note, but still, a hero nonetheless. But it's not the anti-hero who falls so far from grace that should concern us, as much as the hero, who in his own believable pretence, built a pillar of virtues that never really were his to begin with.

Yes, the way you bring down the greatness, the poetry and the heroic luster of something as profound as Love, is by pulling back the curtain and exposing it for all its impurities. And it is then that you learn that Love not only breeds Love and Happiness...no...Love too often decides to also breed Contempt.