The Scariest Thought

The young child looked out into the night and saw the shadows and heard the noises and felt scared without really knowing why. Turning to the old man sitting with her on the veranda she saw that his face was serene, his eyes dancing along with the shadows beyond the light and his fingers tapping in time to the noises of the night.

“Why do I feel scared sometimes?” she asked.

The old man took a few seconds to come out of his reverie and turned to face the child. “What is it that you fear my dear?”

“I don’t know, the shadows and the noises and whatever might be hiding out there.”

“I see” replied the man. And after awhile he added, “These things that might be out there, were they there when you were playing this afternoon?”

“No”, she laughed. “Of course not.”

“Apart for the fact that it is now dark and this afternoon it was light”, he said in a soft voice, “what makes it different now? What makes it scary?”

“I don’t know” she said looking out into the dark and picturing the garden where she had played in the afternoon sun. When the old man didn’t say anything she knew her answer was not good enough. She had to come up with something better if she was to get him to say any more. What is it that made it different if not the dark? She looked out again and saw that the shadows came from the trees she had climbed that afternoon, and from the shubs and bushes where she had played hide and seek. She listened to the noises and realised that it was the wind through the leaves. That noise had been there in the afternoon but with all the singing and screams of delight she had not noticed it until now. And the crickets and the frogs and the geckos, she could make out each of their sounds.

“I just thought it was scary,” she uttered quietly feeling like she was starting to understand something without being quite sure what it was she was understanding.

A smile broke the old man’s face. Children can be so quick to see when given a chance.

“It was a thought that was scary. Not anything out there just something in here”, she continued pointing at her head.

“And if there was no thought?”

“Then I wouldn’t be scared,” she said. “So do I just need to stop thinking about it? That seems hard to do.”

“You can’t stop thoughts my dear child,” the old man said softly.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” a touch of melancholy in her voice.

“It is neither fair or unfair it is simply what it is.”

“So… I will always be… scared,” she asked hesitantly, unsure that she would like the answer.

“Are you afraid now?”

“I… no… not now, not right now.”

“So what has changed?”

“Well, I’m not thinking about it right now,” she said looking out into the shadows and seeing a shape, almost a shadow, run along the fence. “But what if a thought comes again then I’ll be scared again.”

The dark shape scurried further along the fence and then jumped onto a nearby branch and started to head straight for the treehouse. It was just a possum heading for the fruit she had left in her treehouse.

“Not if you know it’s a thought”. He too had watched the possum on its night dash.

Without being exactly sure why, a sense of joy came over her. She smiled. “Even the good stuff, it’s just thoughts”. It was a statement rather than a question.

The old man smiled too. Children can be so quick.

They sat quietly together, listening to the noises, looking at the shadows, smelling the night air and feeling the cool breeze that had finally made its way from the bay.

“So what’s the scariest thought that you ever had?” she asked a little louder than she meant to.

The old man smiled again. Children can be so curious.

He leaned back a little and closed his eyes. “Since the beginning of time there has been one thought that has proven to be the scariest. Like all thoughts, it comes unbidden but it comes to all at some time in their lives. It comes in the form of a question and it is the consequences of answering this question that fills most people with dread.” He opened his eyes and turned his head slightly towards her.

There was a look of immediacy in his eyes that she was too young to understand but she sensed that he had faced this question he was refering to and wondered apprehensively what that question might be.

“This thought is so unnerving that most refuse to contemplate it. But of course the thought doesn’t go away so easily and so they give it lip service. They join religions, they invent philosophies, they drink or take drugs, they perform all sorts of acts, follow all sorts of methods to get the answer knowing, deep down, that all these methods will only keep them further away from the answer. And they see that as a good thing, because to answer the question correctly means… the end. In the very moment of recognition of the true answer… you die.”

Up above their heads some moths flew around a bare light bulb. As the old man uttered those last words the noises in the night seemed to abate, the air stilled and the young girl felt the pulse of her heart like a primitive drum-beat, deep inside. She knew better than to disturb the silence just now. She wasn’t sure she wanted to in any case. Such a scary thought had yet to come to her and she wasn’t sure if she wanted it just yet. But as she sat in silence watching the moths dance around the soft light, her mind perfectly still, three words crept in and she knew there and then that the thought, that thought, had come to her, unbidden. In the quiet of the night, in the stillness of her being the question presented itself in all innocence but with its mortal consequence attached.

Who… am… I?

Up above her head she could see a web which had just caught a moth. As the moth struggled a large spider came out of its nook and quickly wrapped its victim in a coccoon of fine filaments.

“Well apart for the dying part, I think being dead would probably be a lot less scary than being alive.”

Now the old man laughed. Children can be so wise.