SAUVAGE

In giving form to your fear of something you are admitting that you are less than someone that can. When you embrace defeat and resign yourself to the comfortable inertia of passivity, you are validating your own lack of worth. It is integral to your survival to remove yourself from the context of your peers and predecessors - "if not us, who? if not now, when?" said Reagan. If not you, who? You extricate and dipose of your own self worth and determination when you shift the responsibility to a faceless entity that is defaulted to be superior to yourself. Why? Why is your condition to assume that "someone else will know what to do," or "someone else will do it."

There is no one else. There is only you. Anytime some task or achievement confronts you as intimidating or over powering: if not me, who? Why do you think person A is more successful that you? It is certainly not due to "better luck in life," or money, or better opportunities. The only difference is that they are not a coward. If humans were made in the image of god, we should approach life as one approaches a war. Looking out into the dawn of your life with no assurance but your own self worth.

You have such a precious limited time to battle the tides of monotony, though. If not now, when? Next year? When you have more money? A better job? It is necessary to pluck your head out of the proverbial shit-mud and run as fast as you fucking can. To stand with your head high is a fight; you have to claw your way through stone with your fingers scraping raw and bloody against the tepid, creeping, inertia of ineptitude. It's so easy to "let go" and let yourself be carried along like a petal in a river. Likewise, it is easy to seek substitutes for the things that scare you.

"It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence."