Fears

Standing in the store beside the register, I fell to thinking about the meaning of existence. In this place where crowds of people rush back and forth, in a few more seconds I too would have to move on. I closed my eyes, and was glad for those seconds — they stretched out longer than the whole day. So strange, that in that crowded place, I caught myself, for the first time, doing this. I'd been there five hundred thousand times before and never noticed anything around me. There a beggar stood, hand held out in hope, silent, as if in meditation. Looking at him, you won't feel envy. But why not? He knows no fear. Why has he decided to nail himself to a cross? Yes, he has no money — but he isn't lacking life. Hungry, dirty, dressed in nothing fashionable — everyone gives someone like that a wide berth. And yet his soul is clear and free, untouched by fear — only death, with its scythe, holds sway there. And we keep buying things, and still we're afraid, feeding our fear on food that hasn't yet expired. Then, exhausted, we lie down in bed — on something soft, not in a park beneath a pine tree. You don't have to be homeless to be cleansed. But there's no sense in being afraid forever, either. Live today, right now, and don't let it be dull. And don't invent troubles for yourself that haven't come yet.