Climbing the Abyss

Why are we so fearful of change? As a society, we fear change. All the time when a change is brought up in existing order, it’s met with negativity at first. People are against it. They protest against it, they debate against it, and then what happens? Most of the time the change gets stuck. Or only a portion of it gets implemented. We are afraid of change as a society.

But we are forgetting one thing. The only reason why we are here today is due to this.

We had adapted to all the changes which came in front of us. We as a species have the innate ability to adapt to any changes that happen around us fairly quickly. Maybe this is what gave us the edge. The edge to dominate mother earth.

But we are not appreciative of this innate ability of ours. We are getting too much comfortable with the way things are. We don’t want anything which imparts a change to our current state of existence. We are trapped inside the comfort zone we created around us.

But, we can’t always stay inside it. Even if we decide to. Sooner or later something happens. Something snaps. Which was not supposed to happen. We don’t even have the slightest idea in our minds that such a situation was about to happen.

What happens then? The glass of illusion around us shatters into a million little pieces. We see it was just an illusion we created, only after it had crumbled down. It’s like you’re standing in the plain ground at one moment, and the next moment you start falling into a massive pit.

You have no idea what’s happening to you. You are just descending and descending into this abyss. It takes some moment to get a hold on this situation. As you figure out what the hell is happening to you, the speed of the descent slowly reduces. You can see things now. You can see why this is happening to you, why you’re falling.

As you see this, the speed gets reduced even more. Now you see things even clearer. And suddenly you’re not falling anymore. This is the farthest you have ever come. This is now officially your rock bottom. Don’t even think for one second, there’s no place lower than this. There is. You’re just not there yet.

It may sound very cynical, but people who had been through some really bad situations know that things can always get even messier than how it is in the present.

But now you’re hopeful. You’re not cluelessly falling as gravity lets you. Now you got a solid place to stand on. But the thing is, there’s no light. It’s just darkness everywhere. There’s no sound. It’s just silent everywhere. It just black. All around you. Ther’es no life here. Just pitch black whenever you look around.

Then you look upwards after a while. You see a very small light. But you’re not even sure whether it’s a light or not. You can only see a dot. But you feel something deep inside. That this small dot you’re seeing is better than all the darkness around you, and you start thinking. How can I see it clearly? How can I find a way to get closer to it? Now you got a hope in your mind. Maybe a goal to see it. To approach it. To know what it is.

Then you start to look around. You keep walking in the darkness to find a way to get to the white dot up above. Suddenly your legs hit on something. You lean on and check what it is. It’s the stairs. There are stairs here. Stairs which lead to up above.

You start walking up. As you walk up, you can see the light more brightly. Now you know there’s a way out from this lifeless hole of darkness. You’re hopeful again. As you went upwards, you’re able to see the stairs more clearly. You see it’s not an easy journey upwards.

The stairs are spiraling around a wall… with many many stairs missing in between. There are places where you have to take a jump of faith. Sometimes you made it. Othertimes you fell. The thing about the fall is, you don’t land at the same place you first fell. Sometimes you fall much above it. Sometime you descend even further. This keeps happening on and on as you keep climbing up.

But that light, that hope of the other side, is what kept you climbing up and up even if you fell countless times. As you kept reaching higher and higher… it feels like the energy of life you couldn’t find anywhere in the darkness below is coming back to you. You keep climbing faster and faster. Now you don’t even think about the missing steps. You just kept jumping and jumping and never missed. You’re at the end of the steps.

Now you can see the colors, you can hear the sound, you can see the birds flying in the sky. Now it’s not darkness and lifelessness all around you. Now you’re so close to the light. So close to the world.

One final leap will take you out of this pit. The endless pit which gets darker and darker as you spiral downwards. But now, as you lean forward… something is dragging your feet backward. Fear, fear of falling again. The fear of how far you may fall again and how far you may have to climb up.

You feel paralyzed. A thousand thoughts are rushing to your mind. Now Your head is filled with fear. You’re not able to make a decision. You stay on the final step for hours, weeks, months, years… You still can’t decide. You can’t afford to lose the sight of the life you’re seeing now and fall back into darkness.

You know, you can experience the life you’re seeing now if you take the leap. What’s holding you back is the fear. Fear of losing sight from the final step and falling back to the abyss. You keep forgetting that it’s only you who took all the big leaps from steps to step before and reached this high. It’s a small jump compared to the ones you had taken previously.

But back then you had no fear. You had nothing to lose. So you kept going on and on. Now you can see the life outside. It’s right in front of your eyes. The very thing which pushed you upwards like a rocket is now paralyzing you. The illusion that you have gained something is what’s stopping you now. But did you gain anything in reality?

If you’re stuck without being able to take the jump when you reached the final step, then you had gained nothing. If you had jumped without any doubt, you had learned everything you need to learn for living this life.

Everything you can gain, everything you need, everything you want is on the other side. All you have to do is take the jump. Even if you’re afraid, just jump…