Fear and Birds and Anchors and Trees

This is for everyone who moved around growing up, be it different houses, different states, different countries, different languages or different cultures.

For everyone who has begun to think of themselves as having no roots.

For those of us who have determined to keep a mobile life because we are too scared that if we hold onto something, someone or somewhere too tight, it will soon be swept away and added to the list of "been there"s and "done that"s.

For we who understand all too well that life is fleeting and all together too short to waste it being in one place, with one person, AS one person.

For all of us who have grown to be strong enough to never rely too much on other people and places, but in turn have sacrificed things like constancy, security and the beauty of certainty.

For all of us who have learned to cope with our homelessness by proclaiming to all of these faults that we don’t need those things. We are a different kind of person.

We don’t need roots. We have wings. 

To all you, I ask you this: what happens when you lose orientation? What happens when the wind and the rain beat your wings and you are not strong enough to fly above the clouds? What happens when the sharp wind takes you in a direction that would hurt you? What happens when the flow that we have learned to go with turns down the wrong path?

What happens when you realize that you are not immune to getting so shook up that you cannot get your bearing without a reference point?

Everyone needs something to hold on to that is not themselves and their own self-sufficiency. Everyone needs an anchor.

In this day and age, however, an anchor is seen as a bad thing. It is something that ties you down, and spoils your freedom. Today commitment and surety are almost seen as foolish dreams.

Everyone knows that isn’t realistic. You don’t know what life could throw at you. Best to not plan and not hope and not dream just so that if it doesn’t turn out like that it will be okay. Your crushed dreams won’t crush your spirit if you make a point of never actually believing in your dreams.

I have muttered the above statements countless times. Just last week in fact, I got upset because I was thinking about the future, maybe getting married and having kids, having a job and a house and a normal, American life. I simultaneously felt awe at the prospect of actually living in a house that I owned, and terrified of the prospect of staying in one place long enough to be able to lay claim to it. I longed for it with all my heart. And yet I was so terrified of being stuck in one place with one constant, repetitive life that I panicked. I was like a tree that didn’t want to be planted just in case it wanted to be transplanted later and it knew it wouldn’t survive. I didn’t care about the fact that in order to flourish you need to be well grounded. I wanted to just...run. Run until I was somewhere new around no one I knew and I wasn’t planning on knowing them longer than for just a moment. Run until I wasn’t making every movement with the thought of what this relationship would look like in ten years. Run until I knew I wasn’t attached to anything, and no one was following me.

And then do you know what? I felt more lonely and lost than I ever had in my life, just at the thought of leaving behind the people that I love the most. I thought about my family, already scattered across the continents, and how sad they would be to not be able to see me for even a few years at a time. I thought of my friendships, the new ones I have built at school with beautiful, strong people who live the boring life of being safe and close to family and they love it, people who have never left the East Coast and they don’t mind. I thought of the old friendships, the ones that have stayed strong despite being stretched thousands and thousands of miles over the years. I think back to when I was a small girl and I felt lost and confused in a strange new country. It was my family’s happiness that kept me going. They were my motivation and my consolation.

They were my anchor. They held me steady. And when I had no idea what to do with my new life, I made it my goal to do whatever it took to make them happy.

So now I ask you, if you really did leave everything behind, what would you do and what would you do it for?

Because when you leave everything behind for fear that they will weigh you down, you end up forsaking your motivation. When you no longer seek to make your parents proud, or be able to give expensive gifts to your nephew or your friends, or your girlfriend, or have enough to provide for your own family one day or even just be able to hang out with people you trust, what motivation do you have left? Just yourself. Just you.

Alone.

That’s what it means to have no roots. That’s the price of being free as a bird.

Have you ever heard the saying that maybe the thing you’re most scared of is exactly what you should do?

Well, I’m scared of being stuck. Even if it’s a good kind of stuck. I’m scared of taking a step toward something beautiful, just in case it falls away and leaves me standing there, alone, reaching for nothing. I’m scared of committing to something I know is too good for me, because I am convinced in my heart that I don’t deserve to have something lasting.

I’m scared of making connections because I don’t want to break them.

And I’m terrified of having things because I don’t want to lose them.

It’s a scary thing to try what you’re most scared of. But maybe the strongest person is the person who is brave enough to try anyway, not the person who runs away because there is a fifty percent chance that it will fail.

Besides, even birds live in trees.