Roll me Away ... A song that still touches my soul... forty years later.
...I've been told that climbing on a bike and
Riding Away is Escapism...
The lies told about Escape could fill a book... They're all based on one, single, false, accusation. "He's a Quitter." ... "He's a weakling, he's got no guts."
"You just want to escape" is a slur thrown as an accusation of weakness of character meant to humiliate the poor bastard into submission; "You're trying to escape from Your responsibilities. You only want to escape from reality, You made choices and now you're only trying to escape from the consequences..."
Well DUH! Of course he is! Reality often sucks, and eventually, even a strong man comes to learn that
Running Against the Wind is an exercise in Futility. The wind always wins.
... There are all sorts of variations. The sad thing is most people are so un-thinking they just routinely accept the propagandized slur as bad. As long as it's the
party line (and it's that "party line" that's the main problem)... the actual actions of the person involved, and their motivations, are never weighed.
All that's remembered is; "He quit. I've got no use for a quitter."
Context is
NEVER part of the process... The "Bunch Quitter" is simply demonized. The man who "stays the course" ... though it eats his liver and soul, is Immortalized as the hero...
... while the one who had the spleen to wave good bye and step off into the unknown to find his joy is ridiculed as the fool by those timid souls left behind...
Seriously?
A person finds themselves living in a situation that one way or another is abusive, emotionally, physically or spiritually; Of COURSE they want to escape!
If you're in a building on fire, is ESCAPE not the sensible thing? If you are in a relationship; business, personal or otherwise, that is consuming the essence of you, consuming your spirit and joy... and fighting to make it work ~ has failed, time after time ~ is ESCAPE not the reasonable action?
If you're slaving at a job that injects an aching dread into your guts, that is sucking the life out of your soul, each and every morning as you approach the front door... is ESCAPE from that servitude not the self preserving action you SHOULD TAKE?
If you are a prisoner held against your will, no matter how long it's taken for that
Will to come to be, is not ESCAPE the natural, healthy goal of any Creature?
If you've made choices along the road of life, which subsequently turned out to be very, very wrong for you; not evil, not abusive, not morally wrong... simply misguided, bad judgements based on missed perceptions or the misleading, misinformation provided to you...
...if after a good long while and heavy effort to "Tough it out and make those choices work" the clarity of their wrongness for you was made un-deniable;
If after all of that came clear to you... Wouldn't it be foolish to sustain the consequences of those choices in place, simply because you once made them? Simply because others disagree? (and isn't
THAT, the imposed opinions of others, generally
THE problem in the first place?)
Isn't it wrong to
NOT take action to infuse a light into your life, rather than
ESCAPE from the consequences of those wrong decisions and
START OVER?
That old cliched saying comes to mind; "If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is STOP DIGGING."
Escape. More often than not,
IS the adult, honorable and Right Choice.
It's Never too late to try again...
Grab Your Handles and Ride
Brian