In and amongst us, are those set apart, called to a greater purpose, to do more and be more, to push the boundaries and constraints of the world as we know it, to effect change. They are no different from you and I, aside from one thing, their ability to conquer fear. I am now, one of them.

Yesterday I came face to face with a great challenge, a wall that until then, had engulfed and enveloped me. With bricks of concrete trepidation cemented in a mortar of insecurity, this wall was the first to greet me every morning and the last to bid me farewell at the close of each day. I never imagined that I would scale its heights so soon, and certainly not in this way, but I did. And now, I live to tell the tale. A tale of emancipation.

What is it that you fear most? What do you imagine would be your worst nightmare come to pass? Do you, like so many others, skirt confrontation like the bubonic plague? Or is failure your deepest dread? Do you sometimes lay awake in bed at night, tormented by your inadequacies and the prospect of your dreams never coming true? When you look around and see countless examples to the affirmative, does it perturb you that the things you hope for most may never come to pass? Perhaps, like so many generations before you, you may never achieve what you set out to in life. Your best efforts could be lost in a sea of misfortune that robs you of the very hope that defines you. Or maybe the prospect of loneliness and involuntary solitude is your Achilles heel. When you walk into that empty room at night, do you, like so many, realise that all you long for is love? Someone to call your own with whom you can start a home and family, and eventually grow old beside? Or maybe aging is itself a thing of terror. Your youth and all the freedoms it accords you is slipping through your fingers and you are powerless to reverse it. Unless it’s regret that haunts you? A cold and familiar apprehension washes over you when you think of all those lost chances. All those opportunities that you squandered. The big break that you passed over, that love that got away. Which of these is your cross to bear? What silent scream can you still not voice?

I too have known the pungent scent of fear and cowered under its seemingly impenetrable shadow, but not anymore. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to write and create art. Despite the academic tangent that my life has taken, I’ve harboured within me a creative soul. One that assigns different colours to my friends’ personalities, and poetic labels to the seasons of my heart. My view of the world has always been off centre and my encounters with it slightly askew. When others have gone straight ahead I’ve twirled around in circles. I’ve slow danced to fast rhythms, matched pink with green in countless ensembles, and happily adorned giant buttons on my hair just because I could. I never sought out to be different, I just sort of… was.

But sometimes being different isn’t always as straight forward as a green button on a pink headband, and more often than not, it’s a lot less conspicuous. It’s possible, I’ve found out, for the differences in you to evade even you. You could head down one path, oblivious to your true desires, and then wake up one day and surprise yourself. Why it’s almost as if a part of you were lying dormant, just waiting for the perfect catalyst to stimulate its awakening. It is at this juncture, that we encounter fear.

Fear that no one will understand us, that people will judge us. That the circle of friends you held dear will suddenly abandon you and those who’ve known you so well will be put off by the change. Like a deer in headlights, you’re frozen. You want to explore this new side to you, discover what adventure awaits you on the next page, but you don’t want to lose what you’ve built and the comfort of your existence. Will you sacrifice never knowing to keep the familiar intact? Or would the little that you know pale into insignificance before the wonder of what could be, if only you would… leap!

Starting this blog was really hard for me. I knew that the only thing I really knew, the only thing that I could unabashedly peer into, evaluate and honestly explore, was myself. Who better than me to determine what really makes me tick? What greater wisdom than that of my own experience could I possibly bring to the world? The only thing that set me apart, was invariably, me. And yet, it remains a double-edged sword. This dream of self-knowledge that stems from the philosophical observation of one’s own life, cannot be realized without total abandonment. Abandonment to the pursuit of truth by all means necessary, starting with the input of truth.

In my investigation of meaning, relationships, sanity, identity, purpose, redemption, virtue and wholeness, how could I not start, with me? The one subject with whom I am omnipresent, whose innermost thoughts I am privy to and deepest desires long acquainted with. Before I conquer the world, shall I not first, conquer myself?

Now I see, that birth is akin to death. With the conception of The Scorched Ash Philosopher, came the death of fear. No longer can I cower before judgment and criticism, my greatest fears. Not even in the face of such venomous vilification as I was subject to following my post Excerpts of an Insomniac, can I turn and run away.

I understand and accept that like Joshua before the Jordan, I too am commanded to be strong and of good courage; being not afraid, neither dismayed. And then, perhaps, the very land upon which I set my feet, this scorched and barren earth, shall be given unto me.