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I've been participating in sort of an ongoing discussion about existential fears. Some people are afraid of being buried alive. Roaches. What have you. None of those things inspires me to shiver. Even when I think about them thoroughly. I get either curious (as with live burial--how would it actually feel? The clods of dirt falling on my face, and the pressure of six feet of earth. Would I die of suffocation, or something else?), or if I find myself in the moment, angry (I get angry at ants when they come in my house. I suspect I would get angry at roaches. Basically I get angry at them for putting themselves in a position that makes me want to kill them.).

But not afraid. I couldn't really think of what I was afraid of.

My sister has a lot of fears. She is terribly afraid of sinister psychological abnormalcy, scary ghost stories, shadows, the dark... I'm serious. Up until we moved out of our old family house, she could never be the one to turn off the light downstairs. If I were awake, no matter how late, she'd ask me to go down and turn off the light for her. She was 22. Like, she's not always scared of the dark; she's scared of the corners that our old house possessed that someone could hide behind, and so use the darkness to come out... You get it? She has sort of a morbidly vivid imagination. Not to the point where it plagues her, I guess, but it gives her these small fears. None of which I share.

Once she was visiting me in Santa Cruz, when I lived there, and I took her to climb Tree 9. It's this large Douglas Fir on the UCSC campus that is incredibly tall, 200-ft I think, taller than most, and very climber friendly. People have been climbing it for generations. From the top, you can see the ocean, the entire horizon, and the forest stretching around you; you sit in a basket of branches, and previous climbers have turned it into something of an altar--they tie a trinket or an offering to the top branches of the tree. It's truly touching to see the things people bring. People make things for the tree. You see windchimes made from shells, bracelets, anything people had on them when they realized what it meant to reach the top. I even saw a little card, laminated, as a memorial to a friend who loved the tree and died young--my sister went to high school with him, and I thought she'd like to see that, too.

Not everybody makes it to the top. I guess most people don't. I find that a weird concept, since the first time I went, 5 out of 8 of us made it, from a group of all girls, and it was exciting and we shouted things from the top and it wasn't a bit scary, and when we came down we ran all the way home because we were all-powerful, and amazing, and alive. Nothing scary. And climbing is so easy. Easier than anything. But I've brought so many people to the tree, and barely any of them could stomach the thought of going all the way up. It makes me sad.

My sister couldn't go up. It's the very first part, the first little up into the tree that seems scary, and people think the rest of the climb will be like that, but really once you're there it's like walking a staircase. But she didn't want to do it, though I tried to convince her. So she waited while I went to the top and back; I can't go up into that tree without going to the top, however far my friends go. It seems... disrespectful. The tree has a life that is made of climbers, it is this mythic being, and I have to give it its due.

When I came down, my sister sighed and said, "There has to be something that you're afraid of that I'm not."

I found one.

Mediocrity. I'm terribly afraid of it. It doesn't make me scream, and it doesn't give me nightmares (I don't have nightmares). But if I think of it, the possibility of leading a mediocre life, it makes me sort of freeze in place, and I fiddle with something nearby, and hunch myself into a ball until I can snap out of it. The idea that I would give up my talents and drive for the sake of comfort. Scares the hell out of me. Mediocrity drives me to despair.

Someone said, "Seek what you fear, and that is your lesson." The roaches guy said he found in himself the insects' resiliency and ability to survive.

What is my lesson from mediocrity except to drive for more, to never give up on my dreams?

Maybe... maybe it's that life is a gift that's free. I think an intrinsic part of my drive is that I feel I owe something to this world. That for this wonderful world that gives me everything, I must also give it everything, I must also be my best, my absolute best, and I know how limitless the 'best' in one human being can be. There is this pressure, this underlying feeling that I don't deserve to live unless I am at that limitless best, or working hard towards it. So I must work; I must work hard. And I must never stop working because there is no limit and it is my duty.

I must be a genius. And I must save people. And I must make things better, and beautiful. And I must never stop.

But sometimes, there are a blessed few moments in my life, when it hits me full force, "You are loved no matter what."

It's like two big hands. They're just there. And they're not asking me for anything. And they just want me to know that I am loved.

It's enough to make me cry. It's like, at first I don't get it. You mean, I'm loved no matter what as long as I'm doing my best? I'm loved no matter what as long as I fulfill my potential?

"No matter what."

You mean, even if I give up my dreams? Even if I do nothing good beyond myself, even if I stop trying and take everything for granted?

I am still held. No matter what.

I can barely identify the emotion. It's not sadness or grief; it's not confusion, either. It's... it's a true gratitude mixed with... helplessness. It's that which makes me cry. In the moment that I fully comprehend the love that is given me, I comprehend that there is No Way that I can earn it or repay it. Absolutely No Way. It is worth more than anything--scratch that, it is the only thing worth anything--and there is nothing I can do that comes close to being a fair exchange.

And it's not asking for anything of the sort. It just wants you to be alive. It just wants to hold you. And in that it asks for nothing, it surpasses the worth of everything in this world.

And there is no way I can pay it back. All my cleverness, all my efforts and ambition amount to nothing in the face of this.

I give up. I lift up my hands and I give up. I give up my life, because it is the only thing I have, and it is not enough, it is nothing. But it is all that I have; I give it up because I must.

It is my birthday.
I have my present.

2:21 a.m. 2004-02-05�

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