It’s a game I’ve played with myself. Or maybe it was more of a survival mechanism.

I’d always been a big fan of the present moment. Unless I didn’t like the present moment. Then I’d find another moment somewhere in the future to save me from the discomfort of the present one.

I got quite proficient at using desired future outcomes to try and outrun the emotional challenges I could often find myself dealing with. Someday took the pressure off today. Someday allowed me to defer my responsibility of dealing with what is until some time in the distant future. Reaching those desired outcomes would take care of everything, I repeatedly told myself.

And they never did.

I’ve run away enough to know that running away never gets you anywhere else other than where you already are.

Someday is full of those distant utopian promises which we allow to sustain us at the expense of staying with and working through what needs to be worked through. Someday is where I’d seek my own escapist desired outcomes to help me deal with frustrations and situations which felt as if there are no immediate or easy answers.

Sometimes the present moment really does suck. But instead of running I’ve instead learned to create an emotionally safe space for the suck…the frustration, the uncertainty, the fear. Wishing things were different doesn’t make them so. And running from them doesn’t make them go away. Staying with the suck helps me to understand the suck, helps me to process the suck, helps me to grow through the suck. Compassionately embracing the suck creates an unexpected wellspring of tranquility.

While I still set goals and still have some desired outcomes I’d like to experience in my life, my emotional peace and happiness are not dependent upon me actually experiencing them. When I did link them together, when I did need them to be realized, there was no peace or happiness in the processes. It simply added to the frustrations I’d been trying to run away from in the first place.

You can’t run away from yourself.

Photo by Valentina Kondrasyuk on Unsplash

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