I’m ready to write! Oof, well… maybe not. (That’s what I wrote in my journal assuming I was going to talk about something, but then something else happened in my mind. So, I wrote what you see below.)
In a moment, just one, a fear shoots through my mind. Quick enough to feel, but not long enough to understand. So a question emerges. Where did that come from?
Maybe there is no source. The fear is simply there, and then it is not. No origin, and no end. Simply moving through my body, to my thoughts, translated into my words and recorded into my notebook. For me, it has a beginning and end, but maybe it itself does not function in such a way.
And it must be real. How could it not? It shapes my reality. It makes my reality. Is it… my reality?
Well, it has to be manifested by myself. If not the version of myself that I identify with, it is at least from my human. Same as when pain shoots up my nervous system as I stub my toe, a similar process must be true as fear travels through my brain. From its point of origin, the fear instantly travels outward and eventually goes through my thoughts, and only then does my ego process it.
And so can pain act the same as fear?
Think of it as a raindrop falling into lake water. Just one little drop into a body of trillions. Its ripple affects everything, but only the closest lake water notices. Only the lake water next to the fallen ball of water moves as a tiny little ripple emerges out and around the point of contact.
Drip.
And you would think that the lake would slowly fill. But it doesn’t. Instead, the muddy lake bottom from below absorbs its eldest drops. Moving lower and lower as new drops emerge, the ground consumes the old lake water into the Earth itself. For nothing is truly lost, only moved.
Drip. Drop.
My thoughts take the ripples and call them their own. But this is flawed. For when only a sliver of the water calls itself the lake, is to say a smartphone is merely a flashlight. A car is only a radio. And a house is only the kitchen.
So as my thoughts take in the fear, they assume they alone have felt, dealt and moved on from the sensation. Never questioning its origin, and never questioning how far its ripple reaches. They don’t notice the foot twitch as fear just as quickly brings shock throughout the body. They don’t see their own eyes widen ever so slightly for just an instant. And they don’t catch the sight of the man behind them fall back so insignificantly as his body reacts to the fear it just saw in another.
Drip. Drop. Splash.
Where does it come from? How far does it go? Is it my reality? And if so, where is my reality?