One, that there is a right and wrong answer. Because if there is, then that means that I may very well have gotten many things, if not everything, wrong in my life.
Two. So the first wrong set of answers is that, you know, I'm just I'm not supposed to be doing what I do. I was a musician for so long, I mean, even the fact that I'm using past tense! I have been a musician for so long, and the relative level of success or lack of success that I have gotten to invites this question of why am I here and not any further. Is it because actually I'm not cut out for a creative life, that I'm not a creative person at heart. I want to be that kind of person. But I'd actually be much more suited in a role where I'm just kind of around creative people and and, you know, and I'd like I've tried to brute force my way into a party that I have not been invited to.
Three. There's this dream that I had that I think about all the time, In the dream, everybody has magic powers and I don't. But then eventually I go to some house and there's a plant and the plant grows suddenly into this like really lush thing. And their power is, they can make plants grow. Through this, it's discovered that I do actually have power, but my power is that I enhance other people's powers. And so there's something useful about that. But if someone were just to observe you, they'd be like, yeah, there's nothing special about this person.
Four. Becoming homeless.
Five. I have this fear that I am like living a contrarian life. For the sake of it. Even evens from me when I was a little kid and like my favorite soda was orange soda. Orange soda, felt like, cool, but that felt like that felt like cooler to me because it was just a little bit more left field. And so I'm afraid that the that the wrongness of my whole life has been, you know, this part of my nature, this contrarian part of my nature, conspiring against all the things that I actually should choose, because maybe the things that I should have chosen are actually more conventional choices. When I think about the things that I'm scared of, it feels a little bit like nesting dolls or rooms within a house. You walk into one room, open up a door and it turns out that room is inside a larger room. That fear is like nested within another fear.
Six. My parents, especially my mom, really hoped that I would become a doctor and I knew that I just I wasn't going to do that and that actually I mean, I think I'm I'm just afraid of the human body. When I think about people who are doctors, I just have this like vision of intestines and having to sort through them and even though I knew that was sort of like the pinnacle of career paths or something, that was the way it was advertised to me by my parents. I felt like I was being truer to my nature and also sort of proudly rejecting the status quo by saying that wasn't going to be something that I was gonna do.
7. Loneliness. I always want to be in sort of like a never-ending embrace and having a great stimulating conversation. And if I'm being really honest, every single moment that I don't have that is a little bit painful. When I was growing up, I felt like I had that. When I think of my family, I think of the four of us: me and my sister, my mom and my dad, on a Friday night, piled up on the couch in the house where I grew up watching a movie. My mom would make delicious snacks. And it was just like cozy and comfortable and fun. I think my entire adult life, I have been trying to recreate that feeling. Like, I'm constantly trying to have sleepovers still. Like, why would you want this to end? Like, we're hanging out, we're having such a great time, just sleep over.
And usually the response is hahahahaha! Goodnight.
Eight that the people I love don't really love me back. They just appreciate my usefulness. You know, Miranda July? She wrote a short film and the title of it is, "Are You The Favorite Person of Anybody?" And just the title haunted me. I mean, it's haunted me ever since I heard it. My wife is wired very differently from me. She is really independent. And my wife knows this fear of mine. And I think it makes her really sad because I think that she in her heart, she knows that it's not true. It's just like, no, I'm wrong. She's .. it's just a fear. She, she does love me. I am her favorite... I am the favorite person-- I am the favorite person of somebody.
Nine, that I will regret deciding not to have children. I feel like I'm right right now, but I might be wrong. I'm so afraid of discovering at some point that I was wrong about this.
Ten, that there isn't a right or wrong answer. In some ways, like at least if there's a right or wrong answer, even if I'm choosing incorrectly, there's some feeling of order.
My name is Hrishikesh Hirway. And these are 10 things that scare me.
We got a dog a couple of years ago, and the only way we could get the dog was on the condition that in the couch pile situation, I am in the middle of the sandwich: it goes her and then me and then the dog. Every now and then, like, hey, you know, like, I'll notice that we're not in--Why am I? What is this itching sadness in the back of my mind? Oh, right. It's because the two of them like each other more than either of them like me. And so I need to, you know, you to want to cuddle? I have to be in the middle of the equation.
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