Submitted by Kismet on
Image by David Mark from Pixabay
It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.
Khalil Gibran
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“Fear” is written by Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese poet, writer, and visual artist of the late 1800s and early 1900s. He is known for his book The Prophet (1923) and also for his mystical Arabic and English works. In the poem “Fear,” Gibran shares his profound wisdom about overcoming fear. The speaker contemplates a river flowing into the ocean. At the end of its journey, the river must realize that it is not about the risk of disappearing forever but about the trust of being a part of something so great and immense. Thus through the emotions of the river, the poet constructs a strong message for humankind who fear losing their identity, death, change, being left unrecognized in this vast universe, and so forth.
Meaning
The poem deals with the universal fear that each and every one of us faces in life. The fear of dissolving into the ocean refers to a number of different emotions one feels. It can be the fear of death that humans have to confront in their life; it can be the change that makes us afraid; the terror of losing our personal identity; or our personal belongings and merging with the divine consciousness. “Fear” teaches us that just like the river that is afraid to go forward, many of us are terrified to take the final leap and “look back” at the past, as in the poem, Gibran says, “She looks back at the path she traveled.”
The poem also denotes the journey of becoming something. Humans become aware of their fears during the journey. The journey we undertook, the pain we suffered, the joy we experienced – all seem to come to a halt when we see the vastness of the universe. It is about the agitation of leaving our comfort zone and taking risks to achieve something so unbelievably larger than life. In this journey of life, we lose many dear things, but the process of moving forward should not cease. As the streams of the river cannot flow back, so is our life. The poem ends with a beautiful promise of the reward one will get when they choose to move forward and face their fears: “it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,/ But of becoming the ocean.” - https://www.poemotopia.com/kahlil-gibran/fear-2/#meaning
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