Standing Still
What if all of us stopped where we were and just stood still?
Even just for a moment.
The world seems to be in such a rush lately.
Pedestrians speed-walking past us on the sidewalk.
Car horns blaring as drivers maneuver seamlessly between lanes, cutting others off in a quest to end up a car length ahead at the next stop light.
Young adults desperate to skip across the globe to countries unknown in a quest to check boxes next to a life list of seeming impossibility.
Music has gotten faster and louder.
Yoga has gotten hotter and more aerobic.
Career tracks have accelerated.
Our meals are not only fast but they are super-sized and yet we are still hungry after.
I can’t sit for more than a minute without looking something up, or fidgeting or *
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the decisions I’ve made in life that brought me to this moment, sitting in my hand-me-down leather chair typing away furiously on a laptop. Heartbeat quickening as I listen to sirens blare outside my window. Jazz standards soothing the room in the background. Mind racing as I try to focus on one window out of twelve open on the screen.
And the realization hits me. Not like a ton of bricks or out of no where.
But as a quiet voice, that has been in the back of my mind.
There the whole time.
It simply tells me one thing.
Stop.
I contemplated calling this post “Damn You Everett Bogue” because of his stupidly brilliant post How To Run For Never and For Ever. That slapped my face and made me question why I was so obsessed with the lifestyle designers and entrepreneurs and location independents and minimalists and. And. AND. lately
I realized they are all right.
I am scared
But not for the reasons that they emulate.
I’m scared to give it all up because I know how easy it would be to do it.
I’ve been running since I was 16 years old. On a treadmill that has taken me everywhere and no where all at once.
There is something so beautifully appealing to me about never setting down anywhere. No life-long career. No long-standing relationships. No possessions to weigh me down. No need to be held accountable because I am gone as quickly as I came. Never falling in love and getting attached. New experiences and adventures to keep myself occupied.
A legend to those you encounter because no one knows the real you. The good and the bad, the accomplished and the flawed, the very human and penetrable you.
The world is in a rush to get on with things and be big and loud and crowd-sourced and traveled and experienced and remembered. To distract ourselves from the fact that we are spinning and spinning in a field staring at the stars and never moving anywhere.
Do you know how much easier it is to not care?
I mean really truly passionately live and die for CARE about someone or something.
Enough to devote your life to it.
Enough to move across the world for it.
Enough to stand still for it.
* I left this sentence as is because in proof-reading I realized I actually half-typed a sentence and then moved on to some other thought. Never even finishing the first.
Photo Credit – Alfred Eisenstaedt, Life Magazine 1945
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