I ran because I was afraid. We’re all afraid sometimes, aren’t we? Afraid when it’s too dark to see the next step, afraid when we lose our way, and afraid when we finally realize that there’s no way to get back on our own power. The problem isn’t in the being afraid. It’s in the fact that when we get afraid, we tend to do one of any number of things. Some of us run into the dark wildly, not caring which way we go as long as we keep moving. Some spend hours meticulously combing the pitch blackness of the night in the futile attempt to find a clue that would point them in the right direction. Some simply keep on, stolidly, acting as if the know where they’re going, or perhaps they simply haven’t yet realized that they are lost. The last of those, I think, is the most terrible. To not know you are lost, and to not care, those are the two true greatest terrors, especially when the sun rises and you realize that you are miles from any help. Even those who run about senselessly won’t end so far away…those who are truly running in fear don’t run far from where they began, they tend to run in circles.
And why is it that none of us ever take a moment to look up? We are too intent on running, keeping on, or hiding our fear that we somehow miss the millions of stars in the sky that can, if we know their way, guide is back home. Even the man in the moon would speak to us if we listened. The problem is, we’re all too busy talking and running and intently, searching for our own trail that we can’t hear them telling us that the trail we were on the entire time was the wrong one. We can’t see them pointing the way to the true trail that, though it is not an easy one, ends in a place far greater than the little campsite that we were headed to. If we follow their path, we end in the most wondrous of heights, among a city of great and beautiful things, with a view of all the world around. Much better than a tiny campsite down in a ravine. Now, if only we could learn to hear and see…
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