“This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time”

Chuck Palahnuick , author of the novel turned movie, fight club,  never got it so right as in the moment he had his main character explain the existential crisis his life was becoming. All people have these moments of self reflection where they begin to question everything in their lives and the impact they will have upon the world. However some take this moment to contemplate what to with said life, while other become overwhelmed by the life they see before them. These people begin to question everything they are doing and everything they want to do. They begin to question their previous life choices, and all the decisions they have made up until this point and begin to fear that perhaps they have wasted a part of their life.

This fear then grows into something new; a fear that you are just continuously wasting your life away; that life is literally passing you by and there is just no way to stop it. This feeling, while universal and experienced at least once in every human’s life, is in a sense almost indescribable and without a name. At least in English that is.

The word Torschlusspanik is a German word that is defined by the feeling one has that their life is passing them by. The word itself is actual made up of three different words and would literally be translated into “gate-shut-panic”. This word dates back to the middle ages and was often use dot describe the panic the peasants of that era experienced as they were being rushed back to the city gates at nightfall. This was a tactic used to protect the people of different villages from the harsh conditions of nature outside the walls of each establishment, and while ti did protect villagers as it was intended it also struck the fear of god into the peasants and caused them to fear the outside world.

However, the definition of the word and the origin seem to be very different from one another. Why did the definition change from meaning fear of the physical world around us to fear of our lives passing us by? Could the walls be a metaphor for ourselves and never stepping outside of the box? Food for thought.

-Cassey

SOURCES

http://www.dw.de/torschlusspanik/a-17145214

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Torschlusspanik

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872657,00.html

http://wordgeeks.wordpress.com/category/a-way-with-words/page/24/