Run for your life?

Do you believe in bettering yourself? Yeah, me either.

Nor do I believe in rules. If someone comes up to me and tries to impose anything, well...let's just say they should know better. But sometimes I risk it and put myself in rules' way. I have this thing where I don't do what I'm told but I like to listen, 'cause you never know when what the other person is saying might be something worth listening to. It's usually not, most people just love to hear themselves talk.
But every now and then, you stumble upon something worthwhile, like this:

Our anxiety systems are very practical. They assume that anything you run away from is dangerous. The proof of that is, of course, the fact you ran away.

Now, this quote might not strike you as particularly incredible, but it did strike me as something quite interesting, which is why you shall hear about it. The quote itself is from '12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos' by Jordan Peterson. By title, this would never be my type of book. I actually ran into it at a bookstore the other day and I was put off immediately. What kind of loser reads that?

But then, someone close to me spoke very highly of it and she made me reconsider. So apparently, I'm the sort of loser who reads this and to be honest, I'm finding quite a few interesting things. The descent into liking it was quick and shocking, one moment I was skimming through, the next I was seeing all these connections between my own life (and the lives of my characters) and what the author was saying. So, quite the surprise there, but this is not a post of appraisal.

The quote above really caught my attention. Why? Because I'm a serial runner. I'm good at running from things and the more I experience life, the more I am able to identify precisely what I am running from and why. Well, why, that's a bit silly, isn't it? Why does anyone run from the majority of things in life? Fear, of course.
We're afraid.

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Afraid of what might happen if we go someplace different, meet someone new, try something we've never tried before. Often, we're terrified by what might happen if we stay in place. So we run away from somewhere or something because we're afraid of what that might be like. Love, stability, responsibility – they scare us to death. But maybe we shouldn't run, because although running and getting away has its merits, sometimes it's best to just stay and face whatever is coming.

An unpleasant truth, certainly, but nevertheless an invaluable lesson. One that we never get to learn because of this shifty anxiety system, this part of our brain that just takes us at our word, when it really shouldn't because we're compulsive liars, the most of us. Especially when it comes to things that are good for us. We run because we don't know how to deal with failure, because obviously the good things and the good people in our lives can easily be disappointed. You expect bad from bad and good from good and honestly, it's far scarier to think that the good part will fall short. What if it's not as good as you imagined or what if you're not worthy of it?
You don't want to know that, nobody does. So you run. And your brain lets you run because it trusts you. I mean, it's your brain, what else is it going to do?

And this is where you hit upon this really tricky part because you want to run, because you're probably a fucked up human being and you don't want to go towards the good. And your brain tells you to run, because it registers your fear about that good thing and takes it as a negative reaction, as danger. And yet, you have to keep from running. Because not everything that's scary is dangerous and not all dangers are harmful.

It seems it's something very hard for us to understand, that sometimes getting screwed over or having your heart broken isn't the worst thing that can happen. I think that the thing that terrifies us most is life itself and many humans would do anything to avoid it. Pain, regret, disappointment – why would you want that, right? So you run from it, you build your little wall and hide behind it and convince yourself that what you ran away from is dangerous for you.
But it's not because along with those bad things come really good things, you know? Like pleasure and joy, things you will never get to experience if you run away.
So, you must learn not to run away, to stand and let all these things hit you in the chest and survive because this is something you can survive. But first, you have to stay still, and sometimes that's really hard to do.

Anyway, I love this quote because it's such a great message, at least to me, it's the best 'don't run' quote I've ever heard. Because the fact that you ran away, the one that's supposed to prove you're in danger...it proves nothing. It means nothing, because running isn't a mechanical thing, it isn't perfectly programmed. It's something that gets a lot of interference from your doubts and worries and fears.

Don't run away, yeah?

Thank you for reading,