People like to look back and review the year when it comes to an end.
Last year one of my life story lines is connected by 3 books I’ve read, they all related to my fears. So today, I want to share with you about my deep dark fears, and what I learn from these 3 books.
Most of my fears are too tiny and crazy to tell. For example, if I walk along any high buildings, I will stay a far distance away from the building, because I believe someone will drop a wine bottle from window to hit a hole in my head. Or, when there is a dark corner around me, I won’t let myself to look at it, because if I look at it, I will see something very strange and horrible. Sometimes I think I am a crazy. Until last year I read this book . I realize that: Wow, I am not the only one...
The author is Fran Krause, who work as a painter.
He collected ideas about fears, and created this funny and sensitive comic book.
Let’s just feel it directly, I wonder how many of you ever thinking Like that:
Believe or not, since I read this book, each time I am in the situation I just want to laugh.
I don’t know how many of you are scared of facing up to death. I believe every normal person do.
In Chinese languages, there is a word called “讳疾忌医”, means someone is too scared of knowing himself having serious diseases so he refused to see the doctor. And so am I. And I even refused to thinking about death. So I never watch movies or read books about dying person. But Last year there is a book came to me.
This book has been the #1 New York Times Bestseller in 2016. So I was curious and decided to read it.
The author of this book is Paul Kalanithi. He was a doctor. This book is his first book, and the last book. After he wrote this book, he died, in the age of 37.
He was diagnosed as lung cancer. His bright future just ended suddenly.
Paul want his life to be ended meaningful so he started to write his life and death, with the view both from a doctor and a patient.
I still fear to die. But I started to thinking about the thing I always refused to think, that is : how to face up with death.
When I started thinking about life and death, the next book hit me again.
Last autumn, there is an art exhibition called Van Gogh and Gauguin.
Before going to the exhibition I decided to read the novel based on Gauguin’s life written by Maugham.
He abandons everything he has ever known in order to follow a passionate impulse that takes him from France to Tahiti.
While I was reading it, my heart kept beating fast and my blood pressure keep high. The man sacrificed everything for art, more than I could imagine. He sacrificed his body, his life and his soul. In the last part of the novel, it was narrated by a doctor on Tahiti island. The painter was very sick, but he didn’t care, just keep painting until the sickness make him blind. The last time the doctor went to the painter’s home, he is dead. And the wall painting in his house shocked the doctor because they are too beautiful and fulfilled with life to be painted by a dying person.
Maugham was a great writer, I don’t know how he did it, but he successfully make me understand the secret life of a genius artist, which I would never be. And how the meaning of life could be so clear so that someone can sacrifice himself without hesitation.
It is ridiculous to say that I always sleep well, but there will be one time each year, I can not fall asleep at night. The unnamed fear and anxious concurred me. During I read this book, I was sure that the fear is the fear that I can’t find the meaning of my insignificant life. I know it sounds stupid, but this is truly my final deep dark fears.
So I found the solution ...
(I am kidding.)
There are no solutions for everything.
These 3 books changed my relationship with my fears, but giving me no solution about it. So I would keep reading, thinking and experiencing in 2017, just like Steve Jobs said, keep looking, don’t settle.
So, this is my deep dark fears. What is yours?