Member-only story
Die Every Day to Your Greatest Fears
After 28 years of working at Delanos as the ever present, ever smiling, amiable face that greeted every one of Delanos’ million or so customers as they walked through its front doors, Mark was fired.
For days, he would sit by the window of his 3rd floor apartment, dressed in his Delanos signature work clothes looking down at the deserted streets below in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic wondering what he had done wrong and how he hadn’t seen it coming. Not everyone in his store had been fired and 28 years of going in every day and doing his job as best as he could had given him the assurance of stability that he needed to survive in an uncertain world. Now, that had been taken from him. If anything, Mark’s greatest fear had always been not having a workplace to go to; sitting at home, idling and doing nothing like his father had for over 30 years, wasting away booze bottle by booze bottle till he died of Liver cirrhosis.
Many of us are like Mark. We might not have lost our jobs, but we carry that burden of fear that comes with loss. Loss of place, relationships, identity and stability. And we cannot bear to entertain the thought that someday our greatest fears may materialize. So, we consciously block out the internal conversation and avoid a confrontation. We bank on hope and mark ourselves safe from the possibility of our fears ever becoming reality…
