Unsettling
November 23rd, 2025
There is something unsettling about life. Something that shakes the soul and keeps a person up at night. Perhaps it is the reality of death, that each thing we do we may one day never experience again.
Yet, for me, it is an unsettling in a general sense; a feeling at want for words to express it. My mind seeking something it feels cannot be found. The thing itself is felt when together with family, and yet fades to a mourning when it is time to go home.
It is a longing and a desire to be immersed and engaged in something more. A desire to be free from the mundane, and yet for the mundane to feel magnificent.
There is something unsettling. Like the worst of a horror film. Something that shakes you to the core. When you realize much of what you do is a simple attempt to relieve this uneasiness. The fact of discomfort. The fact of annihilation. Relieved only when one truly feels alive and immersed in the deepest moments of life.
All will one day cease to exist. We are each so vulnerable, so at risk of death. So delicate. In any moment we could be gone. Life enjoyed, even in the moment, cannot erase this fact. Its truth comes like a twisted dawn. A hand on your shoulder you wish was not there. Something that cannot be stopped. And yet despite this, we persist. The daunting thought loosens its grip and seems like a distant memory; until it returns again.
How bittersweet it all is. How ignorant we can be of it. How we can pretend it is not so. Unsettling and beautiful all at once.
© 2025 Austin Lochan Dodd