Most of us sit in an office or stand behind a counter — somewhere in the anonymous middle of wherever we live — for about eight hours a day. We’re told to do things, and we do them, and money comes every two weeks in the mail, and we spend it at regular intervals until more comes to replace it.
In the clockwork life of the Western world, relationships are the final frontier, the only place left where we can find adventure, drama, unpredictability. No wonder we make such stupid choices in how and whom we date; we need the drama in our lives!
I recently embarked on a project that has me travelling around the United States and Canada, never stopping in any place for more than a few weeks at a time. It’s the happiest I’ve been in a long time, which is strange, because I’ve never been more alone in my life. I’m travelling alone, experiencing things alone, and thinking about them later in complete isolation. Just tapping them into my computer, with only the company of voices that drift like ghosts out of the radio.
Maybe “happy” is too strong a word for what I feel; “content” might be more accurate. Either way, it’s a little unnerving to me that I can be anything but angsty in this state of isolation.
Please note I don’t say I’m never angsty — I’m frequently terrified, whether by real dangers (like blown tires, treacherous roads, and a thinning bank account) or by the mere idea of them, which can sometimes be worse.
When those fears show up, I find myself wishing as fervently as ever for a man — a strong, capable, courageous type, preferably with James Dean’s eyes and Hugh Jackman’s jawline — to be riding along with me. Not that he could stop my tires from blowing or my chequing account from being overdrawn, of course. I just want him around to . . .
What, exactly?
I guess I could cry on his shoulder, or something. At best, he’d provide a handsome distraction from the fear. But fear never seems to get bored and go away because you aren’t paying attention to it.
Except, apparently, the fear of being alone. Choosing to do this project was a choice to be alone. Choice, it seems, is the one thing that can defang a fear.
I think we’re built for frontier-conquering adventure. And adventure is simply a positive engagement of a challenge; the opposite of approaching it with fear. Now that I’ve embarked on this project, my drama centres on its success or failure, and the issue of finding or losing a man is like a commercial break.
(Then again, I have a date tomorrow night, so we’ll see if that fear doesn’t just come skipping back.)
Fears stand in the way of our joy, like those little mushroom monsters on Super Mario Brothers. I want to press forward, but jumping on them makes my thumbs tired, and I wish for a magical cloud to carry me — safe and unmolested — over the pixelated landscape.
If what I’m after is a man, I’ll likely have a long journey to find him. Knowing that, I’ve always wanted a great job to help me transcend the mushrooms in the road.
And now that I have a great job — accompanied, of course, by its requisite fears — I daydream about a man who could laugh at those fears with me, while riding shotgun, or sometimes even taking the wheel himself.
Illustration by Carmen Bright
Sometimes we get that, and sometimes we just have to keep avoiding the mushrooms and potholes on our own.
I don’t really know what to say by way of resolution, except that I’m grateful to be on the road, with joy set before me.
Flickr photo (cc) by Linh H. Nguyen
