Running away has always seemed so much easier than facing the problems we have in life. We believe that, if we get ourselves as far away as possible, our problems won’t follow us. I once ran away every single time. I thought that I could one day outrun my problems and leave them in the dust so I could finally start living again.
There are a few ways we run away from problems. We might ignore it and pretend it’s not even there. This seems rather silly since it’s no different from a young kid closing his or her eyes thinking such an action makes whatever scares them go away. Yet, that hasn’t stopped us from doing exactly that by distracting ourselves with other things.
I have always enjoyed gaming, and I distracted myself through that activity. I enjoyed the feeling of being in an environment where I have more control over the outcome. The real world seems to have the odds heavily against me while games, especially single player, allows me to be in complete control and a simple reload lets me to right a certain mistake.
Another way we run away is through excuses and placing blames on others. This is one thing I despised about my old self because I made too many excuses and blamed others for it. Not once was I willing to take responsibility for what I have done and that has been the reason why my life kept going downhill the last few years.
Excuses are so easy to make. I can do it without much thought because I’ve made so many. I hate to admit it, but I have quite an archive of excuses I can use to “justify” a certain situation. Blaming others is equally easy for me to do. Yet, both of these methods were simply me running away. I never wanted to face the problems head on to finally deal with them.
Placing blame on others is actually worse since this can harm more people, too. What happens when we blame others for something that isn’t going our way? We think that they should also clean up our mess, too. After all, why should we clean up a mess made by others when we don’t have to? It’s much easier to leave them the mess and let them take care of it.
This actually results in a bigger mess since we antagonize other people in the process. We all have enough problems in our lives without making enemies and add more problems to our list. Working together to solve the problem together, assuming both parties are directly involved, is more logical but many people nowadays don’t have the patience to use such an approach.
I learned the hard way that running doesn’t solve anything. If anything, it makes the situation worse by allowing the problems to accumulate over time. When the problems eventually catch up to us, we find ourselves faced with something so overwhelming we don’t even know where to start. What began as a small issue suddenly grew into a giant that can level mountains with ease.
That’s basically what happened to me. I kept running and running while my problems, like a snowball rolling down the side of a snowy mountain, kept growing and growing. A snowball might hurt briefly, but I’ll live. When I’m hit by an avalanche, there’s no telling what might happen and I’m just finding out by living through the aftermath of my avalanche.
In life, we must deal with our problems. It’s easier to find a solution when it’s a small problem. If we break someone’s favorite vase or lose someone’s valuable collectible, we should be honest about it. It’s true that, in the short term, we have unfavorable outcomes but, at the very least, we won’t have something haunting us from our past and waiting to give us a nasty scare.
from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/11/26/running-from-our-problems/
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