Always Running Away

We are all, always running away.

I think at some point we have to accept that some people are not meant to stay still. They are always running away. But then again, who doesn’t? Why don’t we do it more?

Just like we have to accept that some people don’t want children. Some people play way too many video games. Some people eat vegan. Some people never leave their hometown.

How do you feel about leaving, about moving?

For me, I never mind it. For me, there is always a horizon, a wonderland of the unknown.

The Self-Care of Escape

I don’t think of it as running away when I leave a place.

I don’t think about how it may impact others. I don’t worry. My mind is set forward on possibilities. On the curve of the road ahead, and all the mysteries that lay in tomorrow’s nooks and crannies.

Don’t ask me “Well what about your family, Elizabeth?” That is not the question I am exploring right now. I am inside a moment of self-care, if you don’t mind. Don’t you worry about those kids.

Every person has their own inner landscape.

As far as I can tell, this space of inner abstraction is possibly the single only interesting thing about humans. Because — after all — if you look around at the human experience, we are all sort of just a scratched record that has absolutely no self-awareness that having babies or breathing or dying are all just the same old same old.

I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer. I don’t mean to stop you from fussing over your fingernail paint and your shiny car. (Unless, I mean, beautiful coats of shining paint are what truly sets your soul on fire.) Yeah it’s judgy… I have heard I tend to sound that way. I guess if the shoe fits.

You can judge me too. After all, I’m 40 pounds overweight, I currently barely take 3000 steps a day, and I drink bourbon happily. There are PUHHHH-lenty of reasons to be all like “Uh huh! Get it together girl!”

But I’m not talking about re-shaping the body or just saying no. (Unless that is part of the thing that makes your fall fall fall dreamily into yourself every day).

I am talking about those moments between all the blergh of the day when your daydreams turn abstract. When you feel your-SELF reappearing.

When you feel yourself leaving home. Leaving work. Running away your family, and from space and time. Escaping the call to survive on this Earth, and letting yourself just drift into that ancient pull to thrive instead, in this Universe.

We are all, always running away.

I question: are we going far enough? Are we pulling our feet off the brakes enough? Are we jumping into the space between more today than we did yesterday?

Every year I remember who I was. All it takes is a visit the local elementary school. Plastered in the halls I see and feel the screeching of the new selves. It fairly flies out of the artwork on the wall.

Though slightly constrained — by project brief — the child’s wildness is palpable in the art. You can see they still have the run of the place that is themselves, and they crashing all around in it.

How do you run away? Do you? Tell me where you go.