Moving On
or moving everywhere?
Moving on from things, from people, from places, even from bad headspaces, is something that we’re urged to do from the moment things don’t go right. I always find the rhetoric of bouncing from one thing to the next to be difficult, like many other people, especially since it’s set out in such a way that you can never really find the right thing, (or place, or person) if you don’t keep looking in all directions.
The idea of simply removing yourself from everything to do with something that’s hurt you — or just isn’t right for you — seems to plant you in a constant state of giving up and just hoping that the next time it will work out. And while resilience was always a key trait taught to me at school, it doesn’t give you everything you need to know.
At nineteen, I haven’t exactly experienced very much, but at the same time I’ve experienced a lot. I’ve had to move on, learn to pick myself back up and change course many times, with small things like school to college; to losing friends, family and partners. I’ve also had to try and move on from my mental health — where I learnt that the idea of constant resilience doesn’t always work.
The first thing people think about when they know, or are told, they need to move on, is to move away. It’s the only direction you can focus on when you need to escape or get out of a situation — your flight response is the strongest if you’re defeated. But if you’re never looking behind you, at least a little, how will you know if you’re walking straight back into the exact same situation. You need to look in all directions; move on, but move upwards, look back, and explore all sides.
We must learn from our mistakes after all. The greatest downfall of world leaders is to ignore the often repeated past of their predecessor. If you just stop for a while, and be mindful of your own actions, of their consequences, we can see what we can change, avoid or adapt in the future. It makes moving on less repetitive, and much more beneficial.
The idea of moving on is normally to something better, healthier and generally new. That’s why you need to open yourself up to different paths to move on to, rather than just following the same route. It’s hard a process that, depending on the circumstance, induces a lot of emotions — ones that should be explored and used as a lesson. It’s a tough experience, and one that all of us have to go through many times in our lives, so it’s best to try and get a hang of it.
Moving on often follows mistakes, and we continue these mistakes in how we move on. Focusing on just driving off in any direction from our past can end up leading you right back to the start. Learning from the past has always helped — when I’ve tried to recover from mental health, which is a long, slow process, it’s taken me time to know how to help myself get better, and move on. When I first started encountering how to move on it was tough and a constant struggle, and with something as repetitive as your own headspace, running away from it isn’t really an option.
Being stuck with a problem and only one apparent solution (or nothing at all) is yet another problem to add on top of all the things you feel with moving on. But if you learn to look forward — to brighter times, to being well, to being free of something holding you back; and looking back — to make sure you’re not making the same old mistakes, will catapult you into a new way of doing things, of fixing problems, of being okay.
Everyone will have had to move on from something. Everyone will have to move on from something again. Everything around us changes, and therefore we need to change with it, to keep moving forward. Each time it happens we’ll still feel the same emotions — that you can’t change, it’s our natural reaction to these situations. But if you learn to get yourself out, or even just how to find new ways to move on, it can make the healing time so much quicker. Don’t move on, move everywhere.
With thanks to Florentina Mitrache
