I discovered my deepest fear in high school English class when I was 16 years old.
We read a short story called “A Little Cloud” and although it’s not a horror story, it scared me more than anything else has in my entire life.
“A Little Cloud” was written by James Joyce and published in the 1914 collection Dubliners. Wikipedia has a decent summary, but I recommend that you read it yourself. The story is only eight pages long and here is a PDF.
Despite being written over 100 years ago, it contains a number of themes that are still relevant today.
The protagonist, Thomas or “Little” Chandler, lives in quiet, low-key Dublin and works in a menial office job. He is married to a woman who doesn’t respect him. All day long he fantasizes about travelling to the big city, London, to become a famous writer.
But Little Chandler is too scared to follow his dreams.
The main events of the story involve Little Chandler meeting an old friend from school, Ignatius Gallaher, at a local bar for a drink. Gallaher works at a famous newspaper in London and since the two men have last seen each other he has made a name for himself in Europe.
Gallaher travels to exotic locations around the world, and sleeps with a lot of women. He is loud and brash; a bold, reckless adventurer. He’s the 1914 version of a douchebag. Gallaher rejects the idea of marriage, and tells stories about exploits with women that Chandler considers “immoral”.
As the story goes on, the reader learns more and more about Little Chandler’s weakness of character. For example, Chandler makes an effort to appear serious and important when he enters the crowded bar, because he cares too much what other people think of him. He is reluctant to have a second drink, and drinks his whisky watered down. When he finally does get another drink, he has trouble getting the attention of the barman.
As the two men catch up, Chandler becomes bitter and jealous of Gallaher, especially when the latter refuses his invitation to dinner:
“He felt acutely the contrast between his own life and his friend’s and it seemed to him unjust. Gallaher was his inferior in birth and education. He was sure that he could do something better than his friend had ever done, or could ever do, something higher than mere tawdry journalism if he only got the chance. What was it that stood in his way? His unfortunate timidity! He wished to vindicate himself in some way, to assert his manhood. He saw behind Gallaher’s refusal of his invitation. Gallaher was only patronizing him by his friendliness just as he was patronizing Ireland by his visit.”
Chandler doesn’t think Gallaher deserves success because he doesn’t understand how success really comes about. He has a victim mentality and refuses to take responsibility for his own failure to act.
Little Chandler is a perfect example of Teddy Roosevelt’s “critic”, the man with a “cold and timid soul” who “points out where the strong man stumbles, where the doer of deeds could have done them better”. The critic stands on the sidelines of life, denouncing others while never attempting anything great himself.
Once Chandler gets home, the reader sees the full extent of his lack of character. He starts reading poetry to his baby (something he is too afraid to do to his wife) and the child begins to cry. Fed up with everything, he snaps at the baby and it cries even harder. His wife storms in:
“The door was burst open and a young woman ran in, panting.
“What is it? What is it?” she cried.
The child, hearing its mother’s voice, broke out into a paroxysm of sobbing.
“It’s nothing, Annie… it’s nothing…. He began to cry…”
She flung her parcels on the floor and snatched the child from him.
“What have you done to him?” she cried, glaring into his face. Little Chandler sustained for one moment the gaze of her eyes and his heart closed together as he met the hatred in them.
He began to stammer: “It’s nothing…. He… he began to cry…. I couldn’t… I didn’t do anything…. What?”
Little Chandler is a prisoner in his own life, held captive by his own misguided thought patterns. He is reactionary and has the ultimate victim mentality. All he has managed to gain from the experience of life is the false belief that he is not in control of his own destiny.
“A gentle melancholy took possession of him. He felt how useless it was to struggle against fortune, this being the burden of wisdom which the ages had bequeathed to him.”
When I read this story at 16, I saw aspects of myself in the character of Little Chandler. The timidity, the victim mentality, and the fear of going after what I wanted. Like Chandler, I was too afraid to take the centre stage in my own life.
I recognized that if something didn’t change, then one day I would end up just like him, trapped in a self-imposed prison and filled with regret for a wasted life. It was terrifying and I felt sick with fear. I knew right away that I had to do everything within my power to ensure that that never, ever happened.
And that’s my greatest fear: growing old and dying and knowing that I didn’t make the most of my life. It’s the worst thing I can possibly imagine: having massive dreams that are never realized, and then feeling powerless to change because it’s too late. The thought of dying with the knowledge that I could have been much more than I was fills me with revulsion and fear.
Fortunately, fear (among other things) is a powerful motivator and I’m not on that path anymore.
But even so, writing about this now I get a deep guttural feeling about it. I truly don’t believe that anything in the world could be worse than the realization that you’ve wasted your life once it’s too late.
We really only do get to do this once, and I plan to make the most of it.
How about you..?