If there is a rebel inside all of us, we are introduced to them during our childhood years. What may seem like a simple distaste for vegetables or chores is a natural desire to grow up and make personal decisions. For me however it actually was a distaste for vegetables and chores. I sat on my bike at the end of the cul-de-sac and thought about how ridiculous an idea it is that I must do things I don’t want to do. The irony never occurred to me as I waved for cars to go ahead when they stopped for me to cross the street. The rule I could go no further than 46th street was working inside me as a force pulling me in so many directions I couldn’t move. In a display of cautious rebellion I stayed put, content with the distance I had put between myself and my home. What seemed like a long time really must have been 15 minutes. By the time my mother walked down to talk to me I had calmed down and nearly forgotten what had pushed me to “run” from home. When I returned home I understood that maybe doing a few chores and eating a couple of carrots would be easier than living at the end of the block.
It’s strange to think of all the times throughout our lives where we are confused and dissatisfied and our impulses tell us to run and find the things we desperately crave deep down: Self-reliance, pride, and the idea that the world in all of its complexity belongs to us in some way. With every passing day we build upon ourselves with no clear understanding to what is being created. Perhaps it is the act of fleeing we feel may serve as a natural cleansing of the spirit that will allow us to claim our identity, and therefore, live fulfilled.
Like wind turning the pages of a book we get older yet and try to glimpse into a future that is clouded by expectations and stories of the accomplishments of others. We compare our lives with that of our family, our friends and our idols, whose experiences we feel we must become our own. As we are processing the very reasons we are alive, we are consumed by “what if’s” and “if only’s”. But what we really want is something new, something that is ours and only ours and we spend our lives searching for it.
To prepare for the unknown that is to come, I feel that I first need to discover the unknown on my own terms. This is the appeal of running, of escaping, it’s that curiosity to know what’s behind the door. As I prepare to graduate my thoughts aren’t always towards finding a good job and settling down like they used to be. I can see the rest of my life as a stretched out road covered with others’ tracks. I just hear echoes saying “sit down, shut up”. The more I think about it the more I just want to run and see what’s on the other side of the door. But if there is one thing that we all share it’s the fear of regret. I don’t want to become a person who looks back at their life and wishes they had done it all differently.
So as I approach the rest of my life, I’m not sure where or how I want it to begin. Always wondering, always wandering, like so many before me, I don’t have it figured out. I can only accept things for how they are. Life is a huddle of noise and trials. Every year put behind you is a page of a journey inscribed with words that can’t be changed. You can’t run from that, you’ll never get past the block.
