my humanity

So much time is spent trying to understand, to analyze and predict.
So much energy is expended to make a point and to be understood.
What I am trying to express and what I am trying to understand is so often the avoidance of listening and experiencing what is actually before me.
Why is the experience of mortality so frightening?
For it is in the simplest and basic elements of life that the basics of my life are found.
And yet I try to find my meaning in more elaborate formulas and complex or newer ideas. I avoid the immediate pain of life out of fear, and am left with a more drawn out and isolating pain from my efforts.
James Baldwin has a quote I find very helpful:
Inability to love is the actual problem,
because that inability masks a certain terror,
and that terror is the terror of being touched.
And if you can’t be touched, you can’t be changed.
And if you can’t be changed, you can’t be alive.