I remember, when I was younger, watching dragonflies in our backyard. They would fly into our pool screen, zip around for a little, and then spend weeks trying to find their way back out again. I remember watching them run into the same spot in the screen over and over again, hoping to find their way out. “They’re kind of dumb,” I’d say.

How often do we do this as humans, though. How often we trap ourselves in situations that are either enslaving or simply dangerous, and we are too near-sighted to find our way out. We try, over and over again, the same faulty solution to a problem that we underplay. We think eventually we will break through the screen we’ve gotten ourselves in, but we don’t.

I recently read an article by a woman trying to get out of an unhealthy relationship. She talked about how the hardest part is pushing through the anxiety of the unknown and just doing it. I thought about my own screens, about my own traps. Whenever I start to make progress getting out of them, the anxiety sets in. Anxiety can be a good thing. It can tell you to hit your breaks when a car in front of you stops. It can tell you there’s something “off” about a situation so you can remove yourself from it. But it can also keep you trapped.

Whenever that anxiety sinks in I innately think that means that my progress is headed in the wrong direction. That I’ve done something wrong. So I back up and run back into the same section of the screen I used to, thinking this time it will let me out. But that’s not the case. Don’t let the anxiety backtrack you. Push through and recover. Push through and make it out of the screen. Don’t be a dragonfly. They’re kind of dumb.