Dread

Sometimes there is only the present moment, because you have suddenly awakened from the dream you were living to find that the world hidden by your slumber is one you have never known.

It is at the deepest moments of despair and introspection that a man might look at himself and suddenly realize that he is nothing. A paradigm shift occurs, leaving each of the principles and values that he holds tumbling away, like air leaving an airlock until ego and pride are replaced by absolute vacuum. The years of striving to become someone, the repeated instances of failure culminating in a single success, the multitudes of paths chosen over paths rebuffed, they are all rendered meaningless, foolish. He is like a man who has dedicated his life to the building of a great ship, only to realize on its christening day that there are no oceans left anywhere. The man wonders desperately about how it could be that he believed in oceans, and grows angry that there are in fact, no oceans.

At this moment, a man is brought low, low, down to his knees. He sees with a vision so clear that it is painful, so honest that there can be no hope. Those previous practices that he used to comfort himself -- women, alcohol, escapes -- they do nothing but amplify the sense of urgent danger. Time moves inexorably forward while his mind races in circles, making no progress. He knows only the feeling of doom at the approach of an unknowable horror that is terrible because he is simply unable to release his pride. Truly, to acknowledge having nothing is the same as having nothing, but to deny having nothing is to cling desperately at having something. From here a man can only become who he is or die.