PANIC
What, then, is panic? Something suddenly fills you, a dread, and your are like a frightened animal, a twittering chipmunk caught in a perceived crossfire of dangers, scurrying first one way, then another, in search of safety.
What triggers this is usually simple: a choice, an abandonment. Something will be lost– some old, still reverberating memory of loss will be resurrected, relived, a deep and traumatic wound is about to be re-opened, and all your energies must be directed toward preventing it.
But the way out, of course– as the cliché so accurately puts it– is through: The panic must be lived, tolerated, endured if it is not to rule one’s life, if there is to be any hope of eventual freedom. Schiller, of course, defined freedom as „the ability to do what one must.“ But this, too, may be an overly artful, a deeply romantic conception of freedom, one which too radically celebrates the driven over the chosen.
It is in this sense, too, that what passes for courage may well be only the appearance of courage– action that appears to be grounded in sacrifice and risk, but is only, in fact, grounded in the airy, driven mustness of compulsions. For, without deliberation– without the conscious awareness of consequences and choices– there can be neither freedom nor courage, but only the panic-motored frenzy of high drama, the oscillating chagrin of regret.
Which is why, ultimately, falling in love bears testimony to neither courage nor wisdom, whereas rising, head up, into it may well be an act both nobler and more courageous, more indicative of true freedom, than any fall… though perhaps also more painful, more terrifyingly human.