Everyone gets frustrated in life. It's a common emotion, and one that is felt all too often by some. Anger, sadness and confusion can be overwhelming. When you are overwhelmed, one of the best ways to relax is to find your escape.
For some, they find comfort in the lyrics of a song. Others find it as the wind whips around a car with the windows rolled down, flying down a back road with no destination in mind. Whether you find your escape in a gym, bathtub or different state, there is one thing to keep in mind:
Be grateful you have it.
When I feel overwhelmed with life and feel myself caving in, I always find myself in the same place. I find myself walking down my pavement road to a road that is sheltered with trees. It is gravel and dust, and if you drive down it, you need to watch out for the pot holes, but it makes for a pretty walk. About a third of the way down the road, if you know where to look, you'll find a trail. By trail, I mean a path that you can tell is a path because the grass is stuck to the ground and you can see footprints in the mud. Take thirty steps down a backwoods path, and you'll find yourself at a waterfall.
Now, it's no Niagara Falls, but to find something like that in the middle of nowhere makes it feel like a secret place. It's a place that I've gone to for years, one that I go to and climb the rocks, leaving my problems in the pond of water at the bottom. I sit next to the waterfall, and I listen to the water consistently flowing. I watch as the water turns into a trickle in the summer, a rushing current after a good rain, and an icy disaster in the winter.
For 15 years, I have used the same place as my escape. Even though I know it's not a secret, it's always there when I need it. To have something there, something that never leaves, never falters and never disappoints -- that is an escape.
It is something I've grown extremely grateful for, something I never want to forget. That waterfall holds my past and my future. The constant flow of water is the time that never stops. And the pond at the bottom is the place where years of emotions and problems lie.
Whenever I'm overwhelmed, I find myself looking through photos of a happier time. One is from when I was away on my family's yearly vacation to our cabin in Maine. It's in the backwoods, and it takes a certain kind of person to appreciate the aged logs that make up the cabin and the many bugs that come along with the woods. Being out there is my escape. I use my phone strictly for the time and for photos. Even if I wanted to contact anyone, the "No Service" appearing in the upper left corner of my phone answers that question for me.
When I tell older generations about my vacation, it usually sparks a memory. When I tell people my age, millennials, about it, most of them look at me in horror as if 10 days without a phone would kill them.
I promise you, it doesn't. It does something so much more.
