Tell me what is this thing that I feel like I'm missing

The long, dark, tea-time of the soul.

The hour of the wolf.

That place between awake and asleep, where you still remember dreaming.

It has many names, but they all refer to the same thing, the same state of being. I've been stuck there for a while now; to all outward appearances, I was reading
Children of the Mind, the last book in the Ender Quartet. Of course, I was on the same page for over an hour, because I wasn't really seeing anything. I've been replaying various memories over and over in my head, analyzing various events and arriving at the same conclusions. Or rather, when I managed coherent thought concerning one, it led to the same conclusions. The same ones I've been told by various people throughout the last six months, the same ones I've reached many times myself.

Of course, that's not the problem. The problem is knowing something is right, that it's the appropriate course of action to take, and being unable to take it. Although, in this rare moment of stark honesty, it's not really being *unable* to take it. The connotations of that choice of words imply some external force preventing me, some exterior pressure that leads me from undertaking that necessary course of action. That, of course, is untrue. The only force that stops me is, well, me. Something that originates inside of me. That sounds like, but isn't, an attempt to absolve myself of blame or responsibility. On the contrary, I accept it fully.

The question then becomes, what is it that prevents me from carrying through on these resolutions passed during the long, dark tea-time of the soul, when the opurtunity arises the next day, the next week? That is, of course, one key test of character - it's so easy to conceive an idea, to mentally resolve to face a challenge, but actually confronting it reveals one's heart. And in that crucial battle, I lose every time.

Why? Fear, of course.

Many, many things are ultimately traceable back to that one basic emotion.