Overcome

I wander through the fiction section straightening books as I go. Face one out here; slide two over there, all the while my eyes glide over various titles and authors. I feel it coming, I always feel it coming, yet I feebly try to stop it. And then it's there, crushing me, suffocating me. I feel my heart thud in my chest, blood rush to my face, these names, these titles, I am nothing compared to them. The great names loom over me: Austin, Capote, Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Huxley, Orwell, Steinbeck, Tolstoy.. on and on until my vision fogs over and my head screams "You are nothing! What are you ever going to accomplish? You can't compare. Nothing you do will ever be worth even one of these books" I mange to shake it off, if only slightly, but the books still surround me. There are so many! So many stories. So many characters. So many voices calling out to me. It's too much! It's all too much, I want to throw down my badge and just read, read, read, read! But my vision expands and I see not only literature, but mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, history, politics! The subjects go on and on! Rows upon rows of books, wall to wall, floor to ceiling. My breath catches in my throat and my mind goes on, "Ha! Even if you spent every minute of every day for the rest of your life reading never will you get remotely close to reading what's out there." Then my paranoid side comes out, what if I choose wrong? What if it's bad? What if that time is gone forever? And my mind reels at the fact it's all passing by. What am I doing with my life? Why? How? I'm never going to have this minute again. NEVER. It's gone. Again and again, I'm losing time, I'm slowly dying, but what am I doing? Nothing. Life is slowly getting away from me, I've been here twenty years now and what do I have to show for it? I'm fat, I'm not educated at all when it comes right down to it, and it all just overcomes me. My eyes begin to water, but then, hope. My heart slows, my breath comes easy, and I look around. I anxiety subsides and I realize how I relish being in the presences of these great ones.