I don’t need new beginnings. Every moment is a new beginning. I need a new future that stems from making the right choice right now. I need the strength to do the hard thing. I need the sense of urgency that leads in the right direction. I do not know what the right direction is, I cannot envision what the right future is for myself — but I know that if I always make the hard choice, do the thing I do not want to do, make the decision that will give my future self an advantage, that is the right choice. The future will become clearer so long as I move.
It’s what the pilot of that crashed plane said to himself in the Andes, walking every moment without sleep. “If I stop, I’m dead.” You freeze in place if you stop, fear grows and you get stuck in place. You have to keep moving.
The fear is the worst. The longer you remain in place, the more you fear motion. Time goes by and you forget how little there is to fear from exploration. You forget what freedom felt like and you get trapped in your little world, you get used to a self-made prison. Desire shifts from hope for a better future to just wanting to remain in your current state forever — which you cannot do because everything decays. It all falls apart on you sooner or later.
The real thing to fear is stagnation. Stagnation is rot and misery and fear. It’s the worst kind of fear: amorphous, free-floating, ready to take the form of whatever will stop you from leaving the little box it wants you to stay in. Anxiety is your brain constantly writing horror fiction about what lurks outside so you stay willfully inside your self-made prison.
Do the thing, always do the thing.