Why am I afraid to write?
The honest and direct truth is… I am afraid to hurt my Ego.
You see, I am a very introspective person. For my entire life, I’ve talked to myself and tried to rationalize my own feelings and emotions, why I feel the way I do. I must confess that I’ve been running away from the truth. I have been trying to hide myself behind so many excuses, “no one wants to read what i have to say”, “I don’t know what to write about”, “I’m not a good writer, why spend my time doing something I’m not good at?”, and so on.
What I have come to realize recently is that, at some point in my life, my mind created and nourished this image of me. It is a role that emerged and I’ve been playing it without questioning its reality. This role, which we may call Personality, consists in a person who likes math, not a writer nor a poet; he is analytical and versed in handling data and numbers, not words; he is reserved and dislikes the spotlights, though he craves for success and recognition from his grand achievements; there is a lot more that could be told about it, though you already can establish the contour.
By playing this role everyday in my life, I’ve allowed it to dictate what I could and couldn’t do. But why would I choose to play this role anyway? Why not step out of it? It seems to me that this is the way my mind tricked me to chase its desires as my own, make its fears as my fears, and turn into a servant its own master.
The Truth is the mind is never satisfied, it is always thinking, feeling or imagining something. It shuns reality in favor of its own creation, an endless stream of thoughts that breeds hopes and miseries. By concealing reality in favor of an illusion, it creates a constant state of fear from facing it, setting us in a chase to become what it makes us believe we are. Paradoxically, we never get there and, thus, we doubt ourselves and, instead, fear of not being arises and crushes us.
That is the reason I am afraid to write. I fear dealing with a bitter reality, therefore, I choose the sweet illusion of pure unproven potentiality and vague ideas of what I am. Well, somehow I’m not so afraid at this brief moment, though I must admit that some part of me is and it’s cringing inside.
To be honest, I felt the urge to express myself. It didn’t come from my mind, it came from somewhere else. I am not writing this for appraisal or applause, I am writing it because I have to. It is the only way to achieve what I most desire, which is Freedom. Freedom from myself, from my fears, from my fragile Ego who is afraid to be judged and face reality, when actually nothing really matters. No opinions, no one, not even myself matters. Because Life, as reality, is what it is, it’s indifferent to the whims of our minds, and it is up to us to realize this and enjoy it.
