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When you run away from your problems, it works. Initially.

There is a certain rush that comes from running – it’s the liberating realization that not all problems necessitate solutions. That not all queries require clarification. That not all of the puzzles we face up to with intensity and passion need be solved, settled and packed neatly away on a shelf – labelled "Fixed this" or "Figured out that." We do not possess the patience or perspective that is needed to arrive at our solutions, so we instead take the easy way out. We run away. And it all seems as simple as that. Except when you run away from all of your problems, you eventually start tripping. First over little things – the cute guy who asks you out but never texts you back. The interview you go to that you inexplicably tank. The things you’re running from don’t explicitly appear in front of you but linger just beneath your mind’s surface – cooing taunts at your newest undertakings. The problem with running away is that we’re trying to apply a definitive solution to an indefinite, ongoing problem. We’re attempting to tie up the loose threads of our lives before we’ve detangled any of them.

If you are afraid, you have given up your option to act. Fear is the killer of initiative. It is the killer of action. At best you get re-action, and that is rarely the best thing for you to do. By facing your fear, you push all that away from you. When you reject fear by facing it, you can clear your head, make your choices, and take action.

If you do anything less, you will have a very difficult time overcoming your problem. And that is what this quote is urging us to remember. If you can face your fear, you may still have a difficult time, but at least now you stand a chance, and your fate is largely in your own hands. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be in the driver’s seat, calling the shots. Wouldn’t you?

J.K. Rowling once stated that "Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it," And I find this to be largely untrue. Pain can be avoided almost entirely but the bleakness that accompanies avoiding it cannot. When you constantly run from the past, it wears away the present with a vengeance. You become afraid to love anything fully, live anywhere completely, invest yourself entirely in any new person or venture, for the underlying fear that eventually you are going to leave. That you aren’t going to stick around when the going gets tough. That you’ll be gone and with you will fade all of the sweet, unfinished memories, all of the plans, all of the careful devotions that you promised with uncertain lips.

When you’re the person who runs away from everything, you don’t get to be fully present anywhere. You know you won’t be staying so you check out. You check out from everything that makes you the most alive.