Mushrooms, an analogy

Our lives are dominated by fear, often subliminal. Fear is a mycelium threading its way invisibly through our lives. Hard to identify and impossible to uproot. It bares strange misshapen fruit - often when it detects change or an obstacle. Out of nowhere agoraphobia pops up, OCD unfurls its head, paranoia grows and deliquesces and grows again.

Fear dictates our lives to us, supplies the parameters for our existence, great strong walls which only our dreams are light enough to float over. Fear tells us what we're allowed to wear, say, or think. We are afraid and like fish hunted in the open sea huddle into a mass of same thought, same look, same ambition. And we, not wanting to admit it, tell others, tell me, tell you, that we like it like this. We are as slippery as fish when the truth is concerned, and yet fear has us right where it wants us. It is picking us off one by one, leaving empty eyes corpses sinking into the dark.

Bur what if the fear could be replaced by joy? A mycelium of joy running through the undercurrent of our lives. Popping up unexpectedly, bearing a new kind of fruit. A new kind of person.

That would not be a different concept, that would be a different world.