Abulia

When you run to hide, it is impossible to accept that your need diminishes when you stop running. The Earth is an oblate spheroid, not flat like a pancake. Because of the curvature of the Earth, a person who runs in a perfectly straight line without ever changing their direction will eventually return to their starting point. You return to your usual environment instead of escaping from what you already know.

But you are back on the road again, not knowing where you are heading. Driving through the US interstate highways often brings you to spellbinding landscapes. It feels lonely, devoid of crowds, extraordinarily long from your perspective, and magnificent in every direction you gaze. On one such trip, you pull over to the side of the empty road and get out of the car for a breather. Your initial, haunting sensation softens once your sensory organs adjust to the environment. You feel the warmth of an invitation not to be a guest, but a companion on the journey of the road. There seems to be an orchestra all around you to lure you—the susurrant of the dry leaves on the ground or the still green ones on the trees, the chirps of birds you don’t know the names of, and the jingles of swirling sand in the air. Or, faint laughter from the ants, bugs, flies, and many small creatures living among the debris and dust where you are standing. Only by bowing low can you hope to celebrate it! The breathtaking beauty that envelops you is so stunning and vivid that, if you had an ocean filled with the deepest indigo ink, you still could not seize everything that stirs your eye. Each petal of the blooming flowers, each glimmering ray of sunlight filtering through the leaves, and each whisper of the breeze invites you to make this place home. Even then, you would find innumerable ideas and crave the place you set out to find. Oh, the longing to belong!

A wind whiffs over you, and the red sands on the ground spoil your shoeshine. Staring at the extraordinary color of the sand snatches your words away. You squat to pick up a handful of red sand, as if you’ve found gold in it, and it seems out of place, so do you! The dust tells stories of the lives that roamed and floated on the same terrain you are now. Their allotment of stay ended eons ago, to bleed and meld into the dust in your palm and under your feet. Those living and non-living have not reached the moment you inhabit. Time carries us toward the past, allowing us to remember the loved ones we leave behind.

To linger, even just a little longer, is not an option. You are on a quest for your home, a sanctuary without an address, solely in the realm of memory, floating like a woolly dream, always shaded by the absence of glow. It may not be as gorgeous as the landscape you are in now, but it quenches your thirst to belong and extinguishes the longing that relentlessly makes you restless. It is far away but never inside you or within reach. That is your perception. Once again, you drive away down the two-lane highway. The darkness descends around, replacing the rainbow colors with silhouettes of landmarks and a garnished, starry sky. The beauty of the ebony landscape seduces you one last time, urging you not to leave it behind. You sigh, as if to offer a goodbye, and notice that the Earth shifts into a wintering state to renew itself. It does so every night. When did you do the same to revive yourself? You wonder! You speed up; Only fleeing makes sense to you.

While driving in the dark, you catch a glimpse of headlights in the distance, heading in the opposite direction. You both drive many miles over the posted speed limit, crossing the exact latitude and going in opposite directions without a nod. Not an ounce of anxiety will unsettle you at that moment. When crossing, you trusted each other with your lives, assuming none would veer off from the respective lanes to torch the tranquility with chaos. How were you two so sure? What a priori knowledge made you both sanguine? An anonymous driver at that crossing could have unexpectedly forced you to cease being mad at the madness of your world. Is it too outlandish a concept?

The unwritten trust you carried unconsciously eventually sprouts like rust in your convictions. You knew all along that escaping could only be for a short period. Being in this world demands profound humility, more so than the Pacific’s immeasurable water drops. Your expedition continues, and the exhausting conversations with your shadow persist. You skillfully develop a false sense of security when you notice a smirk from a not-too-distant future self in your car’s rearview mirror. You disregard it as a superfluous notion. The frown portrays the end of your vigor, an inevitability. The ploy to ignore it is merely a temporary shield to bring comfort – for the time being, at least.