Can we ever outrun our anxieties
Born at the Cliff’s Edge
The faster I run to the future the closer I get to my past
For as long as I can remember, I have felt that I was born at the edge of a dangerous cliff from which I have been running a lifetime. Yet the faster I run towards my future the closer I am brought to my past.
It is unclear if, in fact, one can eventually outrun their anxieties. When I was younger, the loss of friends or close schoolmates did not bring a flurry of emotional support teams or psychologists with the intent of helping me or those within the circle having been struck by the trauma of our recent loss.
Perhaps we were less fortunate and our emotional calluses did not in fact make us stronger but more so we became a pin cushion of unresolved anxieties. The very anxieties that we have spent the greater part of our adult lives running from, that dangerous edge of the cliff that represented our youth. And “The faster I run to the future the closer I get to my past.”
They have discovered that our entire body is a collection of taste receptacles and while not having taste buds, reserved only for the tongue, we can taste much more than we are aware of. So too, I am a strong believer that our entire body is blanketed by a memory membrane and it is this collection of memories that keeps us tethered to our past. So, it matters not how fast we run to the future the past is right there with us, always.
Eventually, that which is familiar and constant that being our past becomes the closest destination when all other future attempts are lost as time, age and weariness become us. Perhaps those unresolved anxieties not only did they fail to strengthen us, they became the salt, the corrosive element inside, stripping away our otherwise steeled emotions. They fractured our foundation, peeling away our camouflage leaving bare our past anxieties as the only recognizable receptacle containing our vulnerability.
Maybe today, I will take some time and not only allow my past the opportunity to wash over me, not like a cold, unwelcome shower, but instead, today perhaps I will allow my past to be my future.
Today I will embrace my anxieties avoiding the futility of trying to outrun them.
@Anthony2022mdh30Vibes