I had been going back and forth throughout the end of the week in regard to what I wanted to write… landing on a couple different topics that seemed to resonate with me but nothing that jumped immediately into first place. I thought that I decided Saturday morning but after discussing with my wonderfully wise Mom during our lovely visit in the afternoon (thank you for coming to hang at the beach with me 🙂 )… I decided against my initial thought and was once again left to brainstorm…
Thus…I head out to do some evening cardio on the Stairmaster just before sunset and I get lost in my thoughts and the music…happens often with me in here… and I don’t come out of my sweaty trance until I hear the bell of the 10 minute move… aka I need to get back to my unit or the door will be locked and I will be stuck outside for another hour+ when the next moves happens. So I jump off the stairs… grab my bag and head back to the unit… getting there just in time for the bell to sound the end of the move. I rush in but the officer that is working my unit is standing outside with the door open and I notice the evening sun shining out over the water and I can’t help myself but to walk back outside and just enjoy it for a bit (I love the sunrise and sunsets over here… always gives me an incredible sense of gratitude to be able to experience them by the water). So… I walk back outside to soak up as much of the sunset as I can before the officer locks the door…
In order to buy a bit more time… I decide to start a little conversation with the officer and ask him where he has been the past month or so because I haven’t seen him. Now this can go one of two ways… officers are either open to having this little convo and will go with it or immediately shut you down… in this case… he was open to chatting. He told me that he had been at training throughout California… multiple facilities and that he is happy to be back. We went on to talk about life out there and life in here a bit which led to him bringing up some of the “issues” that have been going on at T.I. lately. I tell him that I know but personally… as he knows… I stay out of the way… “You see me man… I go to work… work out… call my boys… repeat. I got enough problems in real life to add more problems in here. You know?” I tell him. He says that he knows and then unknowingly gives me a gift…
He laughs a bit and says… “Have you ever been to Disneyland?” “Yeah for sure” I say. He continues… “Well I used to go there all the time because I grew up around here but I was always so scared to go on a lot of the rides… like really scared.” (I didn’t tell him this but I used to be petrified of going on rides as well. I would wait in the whole line and then cry at the end and make my mom leave with me without riding the ride.) He continues… “But I wanted to ride them… especially Splash Mountain… which they now closed… but I was so scared.” “Then when I was about 7 years old… I decided that I was going to ride Splash Mountain… I didn’t give a sh*t how scared I was so I got in line. And as I was waiting in the line… I noticed there are all of these scenes painted on the walls as you get closer to getting on the “boat”. There was one scene in particular that I have never forgotten… it was a painting of a family around a fireplace… it shows the smoke going up the chimney and as the smoke left the chimney… there was a quote that says… “You can’t run away from your problems… there aint no place that far.”
Right then two other officers walked up to him so chat over and he said… “Alright Horwitz. Have a good night.” And I walked inside shaking my head… what an unexpected gift.
I ran from my problems for so many years…. not wanting to face my demons… face my insecurities… face the horrible choices that I made… face anything uncomfortable. I pushed everything inward… never wanting to outwardly present as if anything was wrong… when in reality… basically everything was wrong. And surprise, surprise… my world and everyone in my vicinities’ world exploded. The only way to overcome our problems in to go right through them… most of the time… they are not as bad as we think they are when we are in the thick of it but even the really bad ones… facing them… dealing with the consequences and learning along the way is the only way to find peace.
So thank you Officer and thank you Disneyland for the inspiration seemingly out of nowhere.
Never be too rushed to get where you’re going that you miss the sunset… you never know what gift may be waiting for you if you just step back outside…
Stay Healthy. Stay Active. Don’t try to run from them… there aint no place that far.