rising light —
darkness’ secret prize
indisguisable

This morning at four o’clock my daughter woke up suddenly with a high-pitched squeal that woke both myself and Mme. Ross; bad dreams was the diagnosis. She’s little more than two years old, so she’s at the point where all she can say about it is “scary. Mama scary, Dada scary.” I’m beginning to suspect she’s also at this point where the fear of the unknown becomes a cognitive snowball; we talk about children being helpless in a dangerous world, but now I’m seeing that this begins to come to their own attention at some point and makes them very anxious.

I remember the anxiety dreams — being chased by something that wants to kill or eat me; falling from a great height into water that becomes the fizzling sensation you get when you wake suddenly and your brain is scrambling to turn your body on, lest you awaken paralyzed, thinking that some evil beast is sitting on your chest.

The reality is that everything is scary; living a life full of unknowns is an unnerving proposition, and while the older we get the more we appear to have it covered, the fact remains that we really don’t have control over much of anything. We learn as we mature to live fearlessly in a world that defies control by telling ourselves that we in fact can control it . . . and so that fearlessness might be at best a tenuous act — a brave face, if you will.

“Keep calm and carry on,” they said as the bombs fell.

Even the strongest people live with fear. They carry on with lives that float on an ocean of dread, and while some people believe in ghosts, aliens, supernatural creatures, and lizard men living in the center of the planet (yes, some people believe that;) most of us have to go forward knowing that there is always a z-variable that can knock us out of whack and put our adventure on a very unpleasant path.

Remember that fearlessness is key, for what is unknown has no basis in reality. We bring our light to the table, and so we can choose to spurn the darkness, forgive the unknown, and move on with our myriad lives.

Good night, and epic dreams.