Fear

It seems to me that there are spheres of fear.  There is immediate fear, chronic fear, anxiety, then what might be termed existential fear, the fear of being alive.  These fears have differing qualities, but the outermost–well, so far, from what I can tell, but I am wrong continually–is very subtle.  It is the root of clinging, the root of rejecting.  What I see is that to get beyond it, I have to expand beyond its reaches.  To overcome fear, you have to become very large indeed.

While on this note, it occurred to me this morning to wonder who exactly is asking for safe spaces for our kids.  I actually don’t think it is the kids, although they are being taught to demand them.  I think it is the “adults” in these colleges and schools, who themselves never differentiated, never individuated, never completed the psychological task of maturing in our admittedly complex and frightening world.

What more obvious, of people who fear the world, to project their own fear onto largely helpless children we have entrusted them to teach and lead, and to feel that if they can just keep them infantile and helpless, the existential crisis of realizing their massive life failure will never occur. In large measure, these “adults” are, if I am right, demanding safe spaces for themselves since, in their narcissism, they cannot properly differentiate their own needs from those of the kids in their care.

Something to ponder.  As with all complex things, the exact realities differ no doubt considerably from place to place and even time to time and person to person.  This never negates the possible utility, though, of speaking in the abstract.