learning how to go.

Life is very confusing. I'm learning this more and more as I grow up. As much as I want things to be black and white, I am discovering that we mostly live in a world of gray. There are no pat answers, no simple solutions to the things that happen to us. Because they do, happen, with or without our permission, with out without our consent.

I find it very strange that right after I learned how to stay, I learned how to go. It's funny how that happens, like the lesson we needed to learn we couldn't, not until we first understood its complete opposite. I have come to understand that our reasons for staying are quite often our reasons for leaving. We want to be whole. We want more. We believe that we can find it where we are or elsewhere, but the defining factor is the same.

We want life.

We want to believe that things can be better. That we  can be better.

But often, we lack the courage to go looking.

We convince ourselves that what is in front of us is all there is, all that could be. We make ourselves and our lives smaller, we dim the lights and pull down the shades and say--it's alright, there's still enough light to see.

I've grown accustomed to this thinning of air, this listless reality in which I am unafraid but stagnant, content but not full.

I convinced myself that as long as I was not suffering, I was living.

As long I was not miserable, I was OK.

But slowly, day after day, the water slowly rose around me. I woke up suffocating, no longer recognizing myself, no longer recognizing the landscapes I had built up around me.

I had learned how to numb to protect from fear and pain, and with it I had numbed my potential for joy.

I had numbed the core of who I was in exchange for a life of safety.

The funny thing was, my world was not really safe.

It was familiar, yes. Predictable and comfortable and consistent and...

dysfunctional.

So not safe, no.

It is a wonder to me how many of us keep ourselves trapped under the weight of our past.

How often we replay, how often we recreate that which was taught to us as normal.

We are creatures of habit in every way.

They say that a bear who has been caged for years, will continue to stay within the confines of that cage even when the door is opened to freedom.

How often do I imprison myself?

And for what reason?

Because it's easier?

Or because I don't think that I deserve any better?

I want to practice going.

I want to run as fast as I can for life, real life. Life that is full of joy and hope and faith and scary, all consuming love.

I want to be open to loss so that I can receive the gifts of life.

I want to believe that no matter what, there is light.

That things, no matter how unstable, do not subtract from the beauty that is living.

Because we are very much alive.

And we do have a choice about how we get to be in this world.

Whether we choose to keep fighting or whether we hide--

we cannot change what happens to us.

But in what happens to us we choose.

Like I said, I'm learning how to go.

I don't think our destination is always a geographical location, and I don't think that where we're headed always matters.

But it's how we choose to get there.

What we choose to reflect.

It's ok to want more for ourselves.

It's ok to look up and out, to see all the potential.

To hope for change.

To open our arms as wide as we can and say--I'm expanding my horizons.

There is more.

Learn how to stay, and be content. To fight for what's in front of you and give it everything you can.

And then, learn how to go.

Feel the push and the pull and the fear and do it anyway.

You'll never know until you do.

And it could just be that you will find what you never knew you were looking for--

and that it is much, much better than you ever could have dared to believe.