by Áine Rose
'I sleepishly discovered Scarphelia one morning via a chance trend on twitter.
Instantly, I was awoken and engrossed, electrified to discover a youthful stranger on the same wave-length as me, albeit inextricably more refined.
There they were, the same infuriating questions about everything; questions I've always had, some I’d even forgotten about, but Scarphelia articulated them so precisely, it was like she helped me clear out overdue cardboard boxes from my mind, leaving me with capacious and ample space for discovery. But there were some things that I held quite different perceptions of.
The notions of Silver & Grey instantly got me hooked.
How, once we free ourselves from the depths of grey cloud, we can shoot up into the silver atmosphere and grow into beings thirsty for knowledge and rebirth into a new saccharine world, propelling enthusiastically towards quenching our desires.
Right?
Wrong.
Because it’s not this shiny, gleaming world that sparkles.
In fact, from my observations, it just seems so god-damn hard. You face constant contemptible and repudiated barriers, oppositions from your surroundings, people and society, reprisal from strangers in terms of acceptance.
Silverness forms the crumbs of craved expression and acceptance, from a large cake of hegemonic oppression - Fundamentally, It’s not easy possessing silverness.
It’s not just sparkling beams of light in a new state of mind; it’s not elevated joy all the time, accepting your difference and miraculously discovering this sudden ease of ability to reach your dreams.
Possessing silverness is hard.
Sometimes you find yourself in a place where these dreams are simply unattainable in terms of your situation and surroundings, like an abandoned train station where the sole bereft companion of isolation is the dreary fog that engulfs it only too often.
Because although we may feel we are made to transcend normality into our lives, we are molded into believing that the only existence available IS paying taxes, working a job we don’t necessarily want or like, to earn security and a first-class ticket into a comfortable OAP-dom.
I've seen it with my family, my friends, that boy I knew with the rainbow hair that wanted to dance, the awkward girl with the locker beneath mine at secondary school... I've seen it everywhere. Restrained guilt of repressed silverness - wanting to be freed, but heaved under weighty ropes and chains that are built around us, and sometimes that we build ourselves.
But we all have it.
This limitless form of existence, a state of mind that grows and feeds on knowledge and curiosity and reveals this higher level of consciousness. It is within us all from day one and expands when nurtured. It’s up to you, the real you inside, to confront silver and take him by his pale wrists out of his shaded, habitual depths. Some may never reach him, some remain ignorant to him, but then some may just now be tip-toeing across the rickety cross bridge of realisation of the fact that there is, just, so much more.
Okay, so I know this is sounding flamboyantly dramatic, ha.
But all this rambling is only lynching from a young girl who is barely just taking her first steps on the bridge, let alone reaching this higher state of enlightenment.
But to be able to be in a place to take that first step, is a remarkable feat in itself.
Because why is it that we are so reluctant to admit and have faith in the silverness we see inside ourselves? Why is it that we make it so hard for ourselves, when it should be so natural? Why is it that we let the pressure of society manipulate us all into one constant fixed state; one similar form of being where we like to rest in the middle in No Man’s Land, not too silver, not too grey?
Why?
Because of fear.
Fear is the underlying motive for everything we do.
As humans we are propelled daily by the fear that we have no choice but to transcend into a world of dissatisfied security, at the loss of our inner childish daydreamer. Forced into accepting whatever life we must adopt to get by. Ironically, we don't break out against the norms of society out of fear of not being a norm of society.
Everyone has a dream, but so often in reality, fear is the grim reaper who knocks us out of our courageous, determined stride and forces us to settle into to a 'safe way of living' in a discontented normality.We become consumed by fear, controlled by fear and struggle in our vain plight against it.
But fear is not the true enemy here.
Never be under the illusion that fear, as an entity, is not a beautiful thing.
It's long, pointed fingers claw out the things in people that they never even realised were a part of them. The cold hand of fear strips us bare naked in front of cold clinical light, and although we are raw and vulnerable, only then can we truly confront whatever really is lurking within, and then answers can be sought.
Only when we can truly see what our insecurities and doubts are, can we choose to let them defeat us and fall back into the 'safe' life, living in the shadow of what we could once have been, or we can chose, to see our fears, feel the force of them, and do it the hell anyway.
I guess my overall point accumulating from this ramble is that accessing silver and being fearful are so intertwined together they almost form one thing.
Once we are able to realise our own personal darkness by embracing what brings us the most fear, we can grip it by the throat and refuse to believe that it can hold us back, and our silverness becomes unlocked. And your destiny becomes yours.
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light: Plato.”
The fear we posses within, is the sole imposing factor that causes us to reconsider our dreams.
Once we acknowledge and recognise that darkness within us that forever accompanies the silver, only then can we can begin to succeed and reach for our hopes and dreams.
Only we have the power to make ourselves happy and content in the life we want to live; so appreciate today, shake of that clinging cloak of fear and doubt, get up and just... do it.
Do something that makes you happy.
But hey, I’m not speaking from someone who is already there. I guess I too am still trying to figure out how to work this whole life thing. But will I let myself glide though smoothly with a sleek and unimposing pencil dive, or will I choose to make one hell of splash with a massive cannonball?
Ha, I guess we'll find out.
Thank you for reading,
Áine Rose.
Want to hear more from Áine?
You can check out her blog here: http://thesmilingrose.blogspot.ie
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