One of the greatest horror and thriller writers of all time, Stephen King, once wrote about the art of horror and fear. About this he specifically said "Nightmares exist outside of logic. There is little fun to be had in explanations. Answers are antithetical to the poetry of fear."
According to this, then, our fears, though are very real and pressing to us, may in fact be a simple figment of our imagination. But even more interesting than that is that they are scary to us because we do not know what will happen. The ending, and the outcome is a mystery to us, and because of that we cannot find any comfort knowing how great or little the chances are for coming out of this alive and well. The answer is hidden from us, and we sometimes cloud up the answer because we fail to recognize that sometimes things are more simple than we think.
I am absolutely this way. It is where my depression and my Anxiety come from, the inability to see the solution, and the masochistic side of me almost doesn't want an answer. It seems almost as if it is an excuse to fail. "Oh, there was no answer, and because of that there was no way to win. I had to lose."
Sounds logical, right?
And granted, in a world of fear and with the sight of fear, it is logical. We cannot win every time, and so I suppose we will win none of the time. It reminds me of the whole "Realism" genre in writing. Realism is anything sad and wrong and bad that could possibly happen. It is a direct contradiction to the too happy and unrealistically hopeful Romanticism movement earlier before the Civil War in the early 1860s. Realism is a very dark beauty that focuses on everything bad in our life. The logic is that we cannot win every battle, and so when we do win those few battles that we will be happier than if we had expected success. That may in fact be true. I knew it to be the case for a little while. My victories, though small, where unexpected, which gave an interesting sense of hope.
But wait, isn't that contradictory to Fear, skepticism and pessimism?
Why yes, yes it is. One of the interesting flaws of pessimism is that it is merely a watered down and less hopeful version of optimism. It is simply a hopeless man's way of getting hope, though it is done in such a less effective and more destructive way. Fear operates outside of true logic. Fear blinds us, and tries to keep us blind, while telling us that the dark isn't such a bad place, and that there is a kind of strange beauty in being blind.
Well guess what? I am sick of the dark. I am sick of not knowing, of being too scared to ask because I just might be rejected. I am sick of being in the actually one sided "neutral" ground. This is hope. If fear and faith are opposites, and if Stephen King is right, then Answers must be the very essence of faith. Yes, when we excersize faith and hope, we are constantly looking for the answer, and we know that one day or another we will know it. One day, I will understand. Even if it doesn't happen the way I wanted it to, or if things work out for the worse right now, things will ultimately become better.
Now, this isn't to be confused with the wishy washy world of Romanticism. Life is rough, and hard times will come. We will constantly be "purged" of our weaknesses by confronting them. Expecting and realizing this is key to become one of faith rather than one of fear. We also must realize that hard work and failiures are to be expected, though success must also be expected if we are to push ourselves to work hard. If we want to change the world, we must first show the world that we want change, and as Ghandi once said "Become the change you want to see in the world."
I know that this is good and true. I know that even when we are in the darkest and worst of nightmares that one day the sun will gloriously rise. I cannot really explain how I know this except that I tried it out. You too, can know and feel of this beautiful faith and love that I have, all you have to do is let it in. I found it through Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for us. I found through Him and His eternal love for us, that we can become clean and ultimately happy one day, even if that day is not today, or even tomorrow. I know that it will come though, and I invite you to also learn if faith works. Unless you take a step from the dark, how can you ever know?
