afraid

we are walking this world asleep...
we may have moments of wakefulness,
when the brilliant reality of who we are
and what we can accomplish confronts us
and challenges us to stay awake...
we struggle to hang on to those moments...
yet, the lure of going back to what is "comfortable"
beckons us, teases us...reaches out to us from a place
of fear and doubt...and we succumb...some of us...
we fall back into our old habits, our patterns ingrained
from years of believing our failures define us...
laziness and apathy take hold and become the chains
binding us in a dungeon of such darkness and despair...
we wallow, convince ourselves that this is reality
we settle for this living death and yet...continuously ask ourselves...
is this it? is this all there is?
"no" says the voice within..."no...you must wake up!"....
the voice is calm yet, there is an urgency...as each day spent asleep
is one less day spent alive...
the fear of not knowing what is next seems almost tangible
like a fist gripping your neck, rationing the air you breathe...
a chokehold that allows you just enough to exist but not to live
better to be afraid, to live life on the edge of losing it all...
to one day wake up and know...you have left the ledge but
instead of falling, you are flying...and you are living...