The property that a person is afraid of losing no longer belongs to him, Seneca believed. And I’m afraid of death. Yours, your loved ones. Always and everywhere I feel the fragility of existence. Whether I rejoice because my children laugh, whether I grieve when a friend passes away, I do my best to drive away frightening thoughts.
How do I deal with the obsessive and impossible desire to feel safe? Where do you get the courage to trust life?
Maybe the first thing to do is to end the illusion that what happens to me is subject to my will? As Epictetus said, some things depend on us, others do not. This, perhaps, is the source of wisdom: to focus our efforts on what is really in our power, and forget about the rest. The young Dutch Jewess Etti Hillesum, in her diaries, Interrupted Life, tells how in a concentration camp day after day she fought for feeling of inner freedom*. In the face of imminent death, she says: “I can handle it.”
To believe that our life, no matter how fragile it may be, at the right time will give strength to overcome trials
These words made a revolution inside me. To say so is to believe that life, no matter how fragile it may be, at the right time will give strength to overcome trials. It does not matter that today I feel weak, unable to push the limits of my capabilities. Still, I’ll manage. Because I know that the relentless movement of life promises unknown changes. And with a light soul I rush towards the future, not wanting to either predict or command. The ability to soberly assess reality – that’s what else helps to look into the future without fear. It is extremely important not to follow the lead of our imagination, which loves to make an elephant out of a fly and whisper horrors where there is nothing but ordinary life difficulties.
But our most terrible enemy is resigned resignation to what gloomy forebodings promise. Only faith in life and its unpredictable wisdom is able to cope with the fragility of human existence, with the specter of disease and death. Whatever the mistakes and insults of the past, life does not stop for a second, and predicting it is a thankless task. After all, every new day is ready to turn into unprecedented changes, leaving previous defeats in the past. So step by step I find balance. Trusting the future with all my fears and doubts, I feel the pulse of my own life.
* Etty Hillesum is a psychologist and Slavist. She died at the age of 29 in Auschwitz. Her diaries and letters are one of the monuments of the Holocaust.