Fear

God was always present in my writings, and in my soul, and in my thinking. But the most dangerous thing about God's presence in my soul is that He frightened me. Yes, the fundamental reason for God's presence is fear.

Every time I thought about morals, morals were something fundamental in this life. For morals are the only thing that saves us from the law of the jungle. So morals are not, for their own sake, something we head toward and exist by; rather, it is so that they may protect us from death, from the eternal fear that is inevitably coming. This is precisely what I think about, and through which I try to understand my humanity. Even the word "my humanity" is itself from companionship. For when you are alone, quite simply, you are afraid, so you return to your humanity and you return to your desire for company. It is the eternal fear, the fear of death, the fear planted in every atom of your being.

Fear surrounds you like insulating glass; it makes you not take risks. Yes, not take risks. I was afraid that not everything would go as it is planned. I was afraid of marriage and of losing your children after all this investment. I was afraid of poverty; that is why you did not consort with women, because you were afraid of the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, where he says: "Give the adulterer glad tidings of poverty, even if after a while."

It is poverty that prevents you from being yourself; it is fear that plants in you high morals. These high morals are themselves fear of fear. Is being stripped of morals strength? You cannot step out of your skin. Why are the perpetrators of crimes and the spies strong? Because they simply see no morals, and see no restraint upon themselves. It is something truly strange, something truly abominable, that fear should possess you, that it should possess everything in you, that it should possess even your humanity.

Fear makes you not see the future. Fear is itself blindness; it does not let you see your humanity and your strength in the company of others. You are, by nature, a being of companionship, but this companionship is itself not a part of you. And if you are not a part of this companionship, then what was this companionship? Fear makes you not be yourself, it kills in you the looking toward the future. This is the most violent and most hideous thing fear does to you.

There is something heavy when I speak, so that I am like one who writes. And when I write, it is as though I manufacture the phrases and taste them.

Fear of fear, the fear that is planted from childhood, until it becomes a monster in adolescence and adulthood. That fear that continues forever, launching to a strange distance, that takes you to the world of hallucination and the madness that never ends. It is, at a specific time, a knowledge of torment, and the unveiling of the face of madness, and the standing face to face with its eyes. That dreadful fear, it is death slow of movement, and it is the endings of life.