The Pit

The single boldest thing you can do in life is become uncomfortable, which is to say change directions. This feeling of sandpaper rubbing against your skull, thinking it will last forever. This feeling that it is you and only you in the world. That nobody sees you or hears you. We loathe these feelings. We do everything in our power to avoid them. We tiptoe around the edges of uncomfortability as if it were a pit of fire, because it is. This pit is set aflame by every opportunity lost, the future we wish never to imagine, let alone come true. As we tiptoe around the edges of the pit, we find a warm blanket and a kiss on the cheek from a lover. The flames subside as we engage in the comfortable. Before we know it, the flames are gone, the unfamiliar is far. In this very act we lose ourselves to an experience we were fed to feed on. We never bothered to look beyond the flames because they exposed a naked you and I. Fickle, shivering from fear. I am in the pit, with what seems like a million hands reaching toward me, trying to pull me in the direction of identifiable. As time goes by, these flames that surround me lessen, my flesh unscathed. My mind now filled with excitement. I watch as the tiptoers above me fade into comfort. They no longer reach down to me. I no longer seek the warm blanket.