Note 386

I've been thinking about sadness and fear and come to the conclusion that actually, every emotion is a sort of transmutation of fear. To live is to be afraid and vice versa. I think that a life in which safety, comfort and consistency are made premium is no life at all: it is a retreat into unconscious. We should be glad for every fearful moment, for every small nugget of dull lead, for it is the only way we make our gold. We are only robbing ourselves when we try to avoid fear and its corollaries: we are avoiding life itself.

From now on I will try to embrace sadness as fervently as happiness, pleasure as respectfully as pain, to accept my charge as this tragic creature whereby nature expresses her love through fear. That's not to say that I will be a masochist or that nature is a sadist - that is the religious perversion - but that I will accept the mutual inevitability of fear, try to take it with some grace, and return her gold. You are the philosopher's stone and her philosophy is all around us. It's as simple as dirt: from fear, make love.

I hope that when I die my message might be condensed in a similar way. That fear is only the lack of love. That kindness is our mightiest tool. That to love is to be worthy of life. That if you heed these words you will never die but live on in gold. That heaven is all around us, made up of scared and lonely creatures just like you, who, in spite of the looming dark, gave you their last candle.