not to overshadow you, by sammy shmammy

I randomly read something that got me into thinking about how much people crave and cling to the familiar. They are afraid of the unknown, they need familiarity to quell themselves, keep themselves warm and numb and “safe.” but what does it even mean to be safe? Safety from being uncomfortable? safety from questioning yourself and your motives? Safety from having the foundations upon which you built your life blown away like smoke? For some, I guess that would be hell. But why do we live our lives like that? Having spent time in a horribly apologetic christian college for a year, I was “trained” to develop excuses for every rumble in the pit of my stomach and every disconnect in the back of my mind. I was never at a state of happy medium (accepting the knowledge I had along with accepting that it might not be true, as well as accepting that there an infinite amount of information left unknown). I was constantly worried. I was a complete slave to facts. Any little fact that didn’t fit with my theories just so made the mountains I built up come tumbling down all over me and this happened over and over and over again. Why? Because there was only one “right way.” the way the contrived, secretly mad and horrendously unsatisfied so called officials would remind us. What does this have to do with anything? Because from a young age, we are trained to try and make everything fit into boxes, and not just fit, but cram and push and force even when those boxes sides are blown out. There are “ways”, right ways, and it is our prescribed job to master them. So we master the ways, give up our lives and live comfortably.