the burden of being awake (4)
Harboring Fears (allegory)
The dusty plain gradually gave way to softer soils. What had been a dead, stale flatness became a salty tang that tangled hair and provoked nostrils. A cool breeze came in erratic gusts, gathering force at once before slipping into sudden silence, echoing the sculptor’s own heartbeat. The crunchy gravel path twisted and bent in equally erratic directions, as if to mock him, as if to question whether he knew where he was going. For all its new life, the air persisted in its radical emptiness.
"What do you think we’ll find?" he inquired.
"We’ll find what you’re looking for,"
"Are you sure this is the way?" he asked, though the question was about more than merely direction. The vast expanse of vibrant teal sky served as a perpetual reminder of all he did not understand. Dark silhouettes of marine birds wheeled in the sky as the terrain began to reveal scattered olive groves upon grassy and then sandy hills.
"It is."
He walked faster, less to cover the distance, more to escape the clamor of thought. Freedom had an oppressive vastness. The prison, with its confining walls and stale air, had seemed small and totally knowable—a little universe reduced to its barest, most elementary form. Out here, where every step led to an even more overwhelming openness, he wondered whether liberation was really a gift or a burden.
He slowed down to match the companion’s pace as if her calm had the potential to steady his own state of tumult. The air was now biting and clean—a notably distinct clean than the sterile, lifeless clean of the prison.
"I just cannot help but wonder," he started, letting his gaze wander the rocks, "if I’m just running from everything I knew."
She said nothing at first. "Running," she began, glancing over, "or moving forward?"
And the words settled. He recalled the weight of his creatures—all those sculptures he'd seduced into life with his own hands. "At least… I understood the world I built. It may not have been perfect, but it was mine."
They reached a bend in the trail where the earth became certain and the path bent toward inevitability. "And what lies ahead?" the companion asked. "Whose is that?" The crest of the hill revealed a small harbor village hugging a protected inlet. Wooden shacks and huts clustered on the shore, their walls battered and bleached by the perpetual spray. Narrow piers jutted into the water, where fishing boats bobbed amid the foam. Further out, surrounded almost entirely by blinding blue except for a long, narrow jetty, one ship soared tall and majestic—the biggest boat ever. And beyond it? Nothing. A great blue emptiness. They were upon the edge of the world. He imagined what it would be like, standing at the precipice of everything and freely choosing where to go next.
They descended a winding path lined with greener grass until they reached the docks. A school of fishermen moved along creaking planks, their hands familiarly calloused as they repaired fishing nets. They spoke in low, pruned tones, more out of habit than secrecy. The acute scent of salt and drying seaweed hung in the air like fish on a butcher’s hook, overpowering only the aroma of approaching rain and thunder. A steadiness emerged from the chaos, a calm before the storm. Beyond the business of the townsfolk stood the ship too fine for this humble harbor, vast and unmoving. Its tall mast soared as if to challenge the heavens, daring the sky to ignore it. He imagined what epic journeys it may take, across seas he could only envision.
"The others are moving," he observed, nodding towards the smaller fishing boats where the honest fishermen were busy loading bundled nets and tending to their triangular sails.
"Yes. They are."
They watched on as a man with the sure stance of a sailor, chest puffed, bent over the ship’s fittings, polishing them with the care of a jeweler and the pride of a king. He wore a well-fitted uniform so that everyone knew, without asking, that this was the captain. The sculptor’s steps quickened as he approached with hope and expectation.
"Hello!" the sculptor called.
The captain did not answer at first, distracted in concentration.
"We are looking for passage," the sculptor attempted again. "Will this ship be sailing soon?"
At last, the captain glanced up. He considered the sculptor and the companion, then gave a small smile. "She’s a beauty, isn’t she?" he said, more statement than question.
"She is, but when do you leave?" the sculptor pressed.
The captain straightened, wiping his hands on a cloth. "We’ll sail when we’re ready," he said.
Other fishermen were beginning to climb onto their vessels, pushing off with a flurry of life and purpose. The sculptor watched them eagerly and turned back to the captain. "Aren’t you ready now?"
"This ship," the captain said, gesturing with a dictatorial pride, "was built by my grandfather and by his father before him to weather the worst of storms. She bears a lineage of sailors who braved monstrous seas. We honor them by keeping her in such pristine shape. Notice the craftsmanship. Notice the care that went into every part of her."
And they did notice. The sculptor eyed the hull. Not a scratch marred its surface—no sign of barnacles or the usual scarring from turbulent travel. And the sails, though neatly furled, looked to be in immaculate condition. "You’ve sailed her far then?"
A moment of silence followed, broken by the faint cry of gulls. The captain cleared his throat, glancing at the overcast skies before answering. "I maintain a legacy," he said at last. "Why risk losing what they fought so hard to preserve?" The sea can be merciless. I’d sooner polish her decks here than see her dashed to splinters out… there." He jerked his chin toward the open water, where whitecaps danced in the growing wind and where the blue of sea and the blue of sky embraced one another and blurred the border between heaven and what heaven gave us.
"She’s beautiful," the companion butted in, resolutely, after studying him. "But why don’t you sail? And your ancestors… did they not weather that risk simply by pushing off from shore?"
The captain’s jaw tensed. "They faced storms that I dare not imagine. Many were lost. I keep the ship safe so their legacy endures—in memory of their sacrifice." A cluster of local fishermen paused from untangling nets to watch on. Some called out in weary tones that the storm was shifting east, but doubted anyone would test those faraway waters, resolving instead to stay near the shore. Some others eyed the robed companion and her sculptor with curiosity, as if awaiting some ripple of change in the perpetuity of harbor life.
"But she’s a ship!" the sculptor exclaimed with a note of desperation in his voice. He glanced at the companion. He composed himself. "She was built to meet the sea, wasn’t she?" he asked. The vessel's timbers felt warm beneath his touch and they did not creak. They rattled with the spirit of countless hours of craftsmanship. "Doesn’t a ship find its purpose out there?"
A fleeting shadow crossed the captain’s expression. He stiffened, shaking his head. "Purpose," he bellowed, his tone sinking to bitterness, "Purpose doesn’t matter if you’re dead." Then, noticing the concern etched on the sculptor’s face, he drew a slow breath, restarting. "I’m no coward. I’m protecting my family's greatest work," he added, eyes narrowing at the horizon.
And again the gulls cried. The companion gently touched the sculptor’s sleeve, guiding him away to a smaller, far less polished wooden hull bobbing gently, tied to a weathered post.
More fishermen left the harbor, their sails gathering and filling with wind as they moved out to open sea. The great ship did not budge. The sculptor felt the energy and movement and purpose and the simplicity of action without contemplation around him. The smaller boats were humble but unafraid and agile. He looked back at the foolish captain, who had returned to polishing as if nothing more needed to be said. And then the rain began.
The small dinghy seemed barely fit to hold the two, let alone carry them into open water. The sculptor hesitated, imagining what it would be like to return to the big ship and accept the safety it offered. In that moment, amidst the growing roar of a hundred billion excited raindrops with a thirst for blood, he heard the steady, singular sound of dripping water. Always steady, always confined, always familiar.
"But look at them," the companion said, replying to his unspoken thoughts, gesturing to the fishermen whose actions were so fluid and sure. They moved with a rhythm that spoke of knowing their place and of finding freedom in repetition rather than in escape. "Are you ready?"
The sculptor watched them. "What if freedom isn’t what I thought?" he asked, more to himself than to her.
She looked at him with eyes that understood the heart of things and began to loosen the mooring ropes. A new gust of wind sent the boat bobbing against the dock. Dark clouds swirled at the edges of the sky, layered and ominous. Thunderous trumpets celebrated their departure.
"This isn’t what I imagined," he hesitated. "It’s—"
"It’s what you make it," she interrupted with a depth that anchored his scattered thoughts.
He watched the harbor recede, the once-magnificent ship reduced to a silent silhouette, a figure of what he might have chosen and what he was choosing to leave. The certainty of the dock faded and the open water beckoned with a wildness and a buoyancy that both thrilled and terrified him. As the wind pressed against them, her hood gave way at last. Her face—framed by windswept black curls—was not unfamiliar. It was the face of someone who had always been there, only waiting to be noticed. Her skin bore the warm depth of someone shaped by labor and by sun. Her features were striking not for their remarkable symmetry, but for their clarity: a well-formed nose that lent her an air of decisive presence, lips soft but not dainty—colored naturally pink as if permanently flushed with breath. Her brow was expressive, honest, and thoughtful. There was no pretense to the beauty—no curated mystery. Just a raw, unmistakable realness, wild with salt and motion.
"This is what you want," she said, and her words were a lifeline, drawing him away from the shore.
He nodded in accordance with the push and pull of desire and fear. The air was heavy and statically charged with the stupidity of sailing into an active storm.
"What if I was wrong?"
"Then you’re more right than you were before,"
The electric tension grew. The sculptor felt the uncomfortable whispers of the storm—the whispers of his own unraveling. The sky seemed a living thing now, swelling, straining, and exerting itself to unleash nature's will upon mankind. Every fiber of his being screamed to turn back, to seek known safety, to drop the chisel and become the statue-to-be, immobile and perfectly untouched like the ship that still called to him. But the call of the void overpowered.
"Hold on," she said. There was something fierce in her voice, an agreed knowing that transcended words.
He held on. He gripped the edge of the skiff as the first wave of waves washed over them, drenching him in salt and fear and exhilaration. The storm was fully upon them now, and he was in the middle of the stir, no longer just a spectator. The sea tossed them with an incalculable might that he not only dreaded but craved. He looked at her: a fixed point in the tumult. Her presence was more than guidance; it was the realization that she was his mind unshackled, unbound, undaring. He embraced the all-consuming vastness of the sea, feeling the imperfection and the possibility of true freedom and the awesome epiphany that awakeness is not a burden, his heart wild and unanchored, his future unwritten and wide.
essay
I. The Burden of Self-Awareness
“How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?”
Something about this map has always felt… off.
The words and letters are a romantic mix of familiar and unreadable. The roads all consistently curve the wrong way. Mountains rise where, according to the map, there are only valleys. And now you’re supposed to be before a swamp, but all you see is a peaceful, open meadow. Perhaps these roads and trails we’ve followed were never supposed to be straightforward. Have you considered that, really, every left turn might actually have been the right turn all along? Meaning itself is an illusion! You were always destined to arrive exactly where you are, no matter what! We very well could be living in a simulation. You know, speaking of illusions, the moon landings—
You turn the map 90 degrees. It looks even weirder!
You turn the map 90 degrees again.
Oh. I see. That explains a lot.
Now you know. And knowing is the problem. Before, you were just lost. Now you’re responsible for being lost. Awareness doesn’t save you from suffering—it asks you to walk through it awake. There’s a certain cruelty in seeing clearly. You can’t just continue making wrong turns in bliss anymore without the annoying, nagging knowledge that they are, in fact, wrong turns. Then, the worst part of realizing a mistake is not the mistake itself, but the fact that you have to do something about it.
Self-awareness is not always a gift. The moment you recognize your own flaws, contradictions, and shortcomings, you lose the comfort of ignorance. The habits you once dismissed now feel deliberate. Your excuses now feel hollow. Self-awareness doesn’t just show you the truth, it forces you to carry it. And you can’t un-know something. It’s natural to stall at this threshold and dwell upon new clarities and the cost at which they have come: you can no longer act without knowing exactly what you’re doing. Awareness inspires guilt only if you choose to ignore it. And the weight will never feel any lighter.
II. Ready or Not,
“To see the storm is to carry it.”
You take off the blindfold and notice the gaping chasm between you and the person you want to be, and you understand, fully, that you’re standing on the wrong side of it. And bridges do not build themselves. If you don’t mind me asking; what exactly are you waiting for? The trees are, like, right over there. You’re not making it across by just staring at the other side. When will you start gathering the wood? Are you waiting for the perfect conditions just to begin collecting the materials? And once you have them, what then? Will you wait for better weather, for more confidence, for some confirmation that it will all work out before you pick up the hammer?
The greatest illusion of self-awareness is the false belief that understanding alone will transform us. That once we have reflected enough, gathered enough insight, weighed every contingency, we will finally be ready to act. Readiness isn’t found in contemplation, though. It isn’t found at all. It’s minted in the heat of action. We eagerly wait for motivation to strike us into change when, really, we’re the hammers—not the anvils. The right time will not announce itself like a divine revelation—time is indifferent to intention. Perfectionism disguises itself as wisdom. The meticulous planner, the overthinker, the dreamer—all believe they are diligently preparing for success. It goes without saying that, without action, even the most brilliant ideas rot in stillness.
Readiness isn’t something we arrive at—it’s something we build. The longer we wait for it, the more we reinforce inaction as our default state. Every day you spend hesitating, pondering, stalling, makes it that much harder to begin. We convince ourselves we’re waiting for the right conditions, but what does that even mean? Who decides that? Circumstances are never perfect, but we tell ourselves we’re preparing. But preparation without action is just delay in disguise. Some among us avoid starting because we fear we’ll get it wrong when, actually, that's a part of the process. You don’t become disciplined by waiting to feel disciplined. You don’t gain confidence by waiting until your doubts magically disappear. You don’t build a bridge by waiting for the bridge to build itself. Tragically, the clarity we hope will precede action only ever actually comes after it. We’re never truly ready and we never will be. Not for change, not for risk, not for the uncertain work of becoming something more. If we choose to wait until we are, we’ll wait forever. There is no perfect time. There is only a now.
III. Too Comfy to Move
How long have you been stacking up this same pile of wood without ever building anything? It’s a step in the right direction, sure—but I hope you know it doesn’t have to be perfect. Why is every piece so meticulously measured and cut with such precision? This isn’t a bridge as much as it is a monument to hesitation…
For many, introspection itself is a safe haven. It allows us to engage with our own fears, ambitions, and shortcomings at a comfortable distance. We dissect our flaws, analyze our potential, and construct our own elaborate mental models of who we could be—without ever stepping beyond the realm of pure thought. This is the principal danger of self-reflection without resolution. It feels productive. It feels deep. Without action, however, it’s merely the illusion of progress. It’s like standing at a ship’s helm, mapping routes and measuring tides but never lifting the anchor. And avoidance disguises itself as wisdom. We tell ourselves we’re merely waiting for the right conditions and that we need more time—that further reflection is necessary. But introspection without movement is stagnation. And stagnation is slow decay. Bracing against the storms ahead is to affirm that you are, indeed, still alive. To truly grow, we must step into the unknown and risk our comfort and safety in place of discomfort, vulnerability, and potential failure. Without action, we are no longer sculptors of our future. We are merely critics of a statue we have yet to carve.
They peered along the edge of the big chasm. See that big boulder over there? Let’s push it over the cliff and see how long it takes to meet the ground.
The big boulder resists for a moment. And then the big boulder budges. We continue to push it rhythmically, nudging it over and over. And then it tips forward. Then it teeters. And then, finally, it vanishes into the abyss.
That’s what uncertainty feels like. That savagely long moment of weightlessness, the split-second (or minute) where nothing is solid beneath you. Maybe that's why you’re still standing here, stacking wood, adjusting plans, overengineering. Once you start building—I mean really building—you have to trust that the bridge will hold. And yeah, you’re super dead if it collapses, but you’re also super dead if you never cross. You can keep measuring, keep refining, keep convincing yourself that you’re getting ready, but the truth is, you’ve gotten too comfortable here, standing at the edge, thinking instead of moving. There’s safety in theory. If the bridge is supposed to fall, then it’s going to fall whether or not you cross it now or next year. There’s no risk in planning. But a plan that never leaves your head is just a cage with prettier walls. You don’t step onto the bridge because you’re certain it will hold; you step because staying here isn’t an option.
IV. Action
If self-awareness is a burden, then action is the first step towards relief.
You set down the first plank of many. It doesn’t look like much, though. It’s just an audacious strip of wood stretching out over an unforgiving abyss. You press your weight onto it, testing. It holds well, but still feels fragile. I think I hear it creaking slightly too. That’s definitely not reassuring, but you won’t know how sturdy the bridge is until you build the full thing. The first plank isn’t there to carry you across the bridge; it’s there so the next plank has somewhere to sit. When you set that first plank in place, feel that slight wobble or that uneven gap and remember that they aren’t indicative of failure. The bridge is trying to speak to you: reinforce here, adjust there. Every successive plank you lay is telling you something minuscule but real about how to keep moving forward.
The boulder is a metaphor for you. It is a testament to inertia. A concentrated shove will barely move it. Nudge it in sway with its motion and it begins to roll. Every small action from then on accumulates into a force that overcomes the resistances of life. Neither the bridge nor the rolling boulder began their journey with a single, perfect push. Movement inspires more movement. Thus, productivity is a cycle. It takes effort to enter it, but once you have your momentum, all you ideally need to worry about is avoiding things that drain that momentum. Every step taken reveals the next. Every failure refines understanding. Every action produces feedback, either validating our insights or challenging them, forcing us to abandon the comfort of stillness and to adjust ourselves. If we believe we are disciplined but fail to maintain our commitments, only the harshness of time reveals our self-deception. If we claim we are passionate about something yet we never approach it, inaction exposes our truth. Reality is the final judge of our beliefs about ourselves, but we should already know whether we’re guilty or innocent. Action is essential because it’s the only thing preventing introspection from becoming an echo chamber. It takes off our blindfolds so we can see and acknowledge the chasm. Mistakes are inevitable as much as they are essential; the more we engage with our reality beyond the realm of theory, the more we sharpen our insights. The first step will be uncertain, but its job isn’t to carry you to your goals; it’s there so the next step has somewhere to sit. The only true failure is standing still.
Another plank. The gap closes. Another chasm awaits.
V. Regret
“The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing.”
If self-awareness is a burden, then inaction is a curse.
Time continues to weave its charming tapestries. Let’s revisit the bridge that started it all, all those years ago. The silent march of the seasons has worn the calendar thin. Reality breaks the serene silence. You never built the bridge. You push aside the scattered tools and unused wood—a pile of remnants, and a sad, half-assembled dream that never came to fruition. The forest will not forgive you. It’s a harsh, unyielding reminder that you never transformed intention into action. You spent years lost in daydreams while the real world moved on. The sweet passage of time goes bitter. You open an old journal, pages filled with detailed sketches and plans for a grand bridge. Each entry has a voice of its own, each a testament to deferred ambitions, each filling the air with whispered accusations. The final pages remain blank as you flip through them. Nevertheless, the mortal cost of your inaction has been audited and recorded clearly in ink and paper. And the journal stares at you. And the journal will not forgive you. You allowed hesitation to win. And you will not forgive yourself.
Much like success isn’t about a single achievement, regret isn’t about a single failure. It’s a cumulative string of every risk you never took and every opportunity you let vanish. It’s a harsh lesson that true failure is to not try at all—a lesson you would have learned either way. The relentless march of time reveals the cost of inaction with brutal clarity. The passage of time is less forgiving than the abyss. It leaves nothing but the voice of what could have been. Every minute spent locked in uncertainty is another piece of you eroding into nothingness. Your big pile of decaying wood is a grotesque monument to wastefulness. The mind may justify inaction in the moment, but time is merciless. Your dreams have withered, but they’ll never leave. The more you stand still, the more you internalize the belief that you’re incapable of change. The longer the boulder sits and settles, the more difficult it is to push. But life doesn’t wait. The storm approaches regardless of whether we care to act or not. There is no happy ending. Regret by inaction is a slow and painful death—ten thousand times worse than any failure. We must embrace the burden of responsibility. We must abandon the illusion of readiness. We must reject the warmth of endless reflection.
And far below, the big boulder finally crashes against the canyon floor.
