As he felt the darkness wash over him, the light draining from the cave walls as he moved forward, a simple understanding came upon him--he was alone. Within himself, he slowly built up this single idea, that he was not only alone in the cave, but that he was alone in the world. The thing about fear is, it is at its worst when you accept its pertinence to your current situation. An example: if I sit with you on one of the many flowing meadows of New Zealand, staring into the infinite blue of the sky and the Pacific, enjoying a nice large drink of strawberry and crushed ice--also imagine a flock of sheep wandering nearby bleating almost inaudibly--and when we gaze longing at the one long cloud strewn across the vastness of the heavens after exchanging a quiet smile that bonds us deeper than we care to explain or tell, I turn back to you and tell you that you will die alone. You probably have some living relatives, perhaps a happy family of your own, maybe a domestic animal or two. You have probably fulfilled a number of ambitions and in doing so made a few lifelong friends in the process--perhaps that is how you met me--but you will die alone irrespective of how many people you surround yourself with. "Well," you might say "that's all very much for a lovely afternoon then," and frown slightly, half-smiling since our surroundings still take the edge off, but that is precisely it--you can handle it because it has no immediate bearing. In the darkness, when you are alone, you ruminate, brew, and extrapolate until you can think of nothing else but how true it is, that you will die alone, and maybe here is the place, and perhaps soon is the time. He stretched his eyes open as wide as he could. It made no difference in the belly of the cavern. Soon, he became so absolutely engrossed with this single idea, he felt that he was on the verge of madness, clinging so hard to it until it cut--until he bled. The great irony of his situation was that in the sole scrap of knowledge he now held, he was mistaken.
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