40 Minute discursive writing - unseen prompt.

‘We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than reality”, Seneca.

Use this meditation as a stimulus for a piece of discursive writing that expresses your
perspective about a significant concern or idea that you have engaged with in ONE of your
prescribed texts from Module A, B or C. (15 marks)

THE COMMON GROUND

You either fall to the left or right of the line of pure realism, rarely ever directly on it. To the
left are the overthinkers, the anxiety ridden minds who focus far too much on reality. To the right are
the imaginatives, those so far detached from this reality that they often fall victim to it. It is the perfect
balance between the two, the line, which allows for the minimal quantity of fear and suffering optimal
for survival. So what is the line?

THE OVERTHINKERS spend far too much time in their own heads. Now, I will be honest in
saying that I too tend to indulge in a little critical analysis of my surroundings, and that is more often
than not fairly harmless. It is the chronic overthinking, over analysing, overly frightened people who
spiral themselves into a hole of contemplative existence. They are scared, and that is a fact. I tell
myself I should care less about what Jenny meant when she told me my shoes looked ‘nice’ in a
slightly sarcastic tone, the consequences I will face are not lethal. Perhaps this overflow of excessive
contemplation stems from a social point, the painfully evident social hierarchy which determines your
teenage experience. This breeding of anxious overly- analytical children is not some marvellous
coincidence, it is a byproduct of the toxic media, as ‘popularity’ is determined by who you surround
yourself with.

The children are thinking about the consequences f a corked nose or a small chest. Fear
continues to rise up through the youth, a fear which seems to be pushing further and further from that
balanced line with every new generation.

STOP DWELLING. STOP PREDICTING

‘Live in the moment’

THE IMAGINATIVES spend far too much time in their own heads. Even if their perspective
on the world is so far skewed in the opposite direction from the overthinkers (generally). These
imaginatives are the hopeful, the yearners, the wishers. Their reality is nothing but a concept thats
been brewed up in their neocortex and thalamus. Again, I too find myself constructing the occasional,
hopeful scenario where all my dreams come true, but that is not the problem. The problem is the
people so far removed from reality that our line doesn't even exist to them anymore, they create their
own ‘new and improved’ line. Take the character of Abigail Williams for example, just a little girl
who constructed an elaborate lie laced with the hope that she would avoid consequence and gain
power. It was this horrendous imaginative product which sent the whole town of Salem on a wild
witch-hunt. The damage done is irreversible.

IMAGINATIVE MINDS SEE NO CONSEQUENCES.

 THE OVERTHINKING IMAGINATIVES might suggest the happy medium amongst the
chaos, you might think they lay on the line, at the origin where the x and y axes meet. But you’re
wrong. They are actually an alternate breed of extremist located on the hidden z axis. The push and
pull of an obscene focus on the real world and an obscene focus on the imaginary one fluctuates so
horrendously that the mind of an overthinking imaginative is subject to a morbid form of emotional
and mental torture, inflicted by themselves. It is the mix of societal pressure and escapism that
formulates this alternate perspective.

THE COMBINATION of these populations induces chaos, it creates a world where we are
more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than reality. The line is
ultimately unattainable, and unfortunately that is what you have to accept. The world can never truly
be at balance when no individual can make it to the line.

The day a perfect individual appears on the line is the day that this line appears. It is the day
the fear starts to cease and the overthinkers start to discover hope, the day that the imaginatives
discover realism. But it all starts with the one person brave enough to establish a COMMON
GROUND.