The Insanity of Existence in Society
As a young girl panics and runs away terrified when she's surprised by a spider, or alternatively, she attempts to kill it, we too also run away or react aggressively against things that we ourselves do not understand. Every fear is caused by the same thing: misunderstanding. Once a particular fear is understood and overcome, however, we can't help but look back at our past worries as absurd, shameful, and at best, ludicrous. Whether it's fear of marriage, or fear of divorce, fear of college, or fear of a mediocre life, fear of leaving the past behind, or fear of the coming future, our lives are woven by a net of fear.
Fear is introduced to us as we learn about responsibility. Responsibility comes as a result of other people's expectations of us. We learn the hard way to be responsible individuals, and some never learn at all. As we develop responsibilities, fear is brought back into a world that we once thought was always safe to tred through. As children, we walked aimlessly and without confusion through an open field, without expecting anything of any sort. As we grew up, however, the open field closed little by little as we acquired more "freedom". As teenagers, we could now smoke, but we couldn't enjoy having fun in the playground anymore. As adults, we could now drink, but we tried to stop ourselves from smoking too much. As the expectations of other people towards us became more complex, our expectations towards other people and towards ourselves grew as well. Children don't have these expectations. This is essentially why small children have no fear. Children react instinctively to what they encounter. They never analayze the consequences of their actions, for they still have not learned what a consequence is. But it is essentially this aspect of children that makes them so happy, so understanding, so pure hearted, and so free. Fear has not reached them yet. Real freedom is attained with ignorance of consequence.
I've always been surprised by how unworried and rational a child can be when confronted by what we would deem a disaster. At the age of three, one of my Chinese friends went with his parents to see a set of caves that stood above tall and idle cliffs in the mountains thirty miles from the city. As he was walking beside the cliffs through the narrow trails, he suddenly reached out of to grab a flower, and tripped, falling three hundred feet down into the precipice. His mom reacted instantly and screamed for help. They all thought he was dead. But my friend was unafraid. As he fell, he reached in for a tree limb, grabbed it, but failed. Then he reached for a second one, and this time, he succeeded and took firm hold of another tree limb. Unbelievably, he survived the incident unscathed. Had an adult fallen off the cliff, he would have panicked, reacted too late, and died. But the child, unmoved by the catastrophe that would have ensued, or rather, oblivious to it, thought first to save himself quite out of instinct and without a second thought of fear in mind. That is the true power of instinct, and a power that we must give up as we are introduced into society.
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The Insanity of Existence in Society
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