We Are Horses

I was born to run.  We all feel this way from time to time, but fundamentally I am different from most people in that I absolutely have to run.  Traditional constructs (jobs, schools etc) always felt like cages to me.  I could see their walls, their windows, and found nothing inside but sterility and indifference.  These places were not natural--they were built by humans for creatures other than humans--I could not wait to leave them.  Life, lived truthfully, comes down to responding to stimuli, being receptive, and allowing things to affect you.  I needed freedom to experience life in this way, so I departed the traditional places and sought solace in the margins.     

Things are different now.  Maybe this is the death of childhood. Maybe this is the beginning of old age. My hairs are turning gray and I cannot blame genetics alone. I feel out of touch.  I feel out of touch with that innate ability to make accurate life decisions.  Looking back over the last decade I have to ask myself: what changed?  And how much of this change resides within me personally, and how much of it is this worlds rapid ascent toward technological and cultural madness?  

Some things are certain.  I am definitely loosing touch with the natural sensitivity of being, the frequency of youth, the alignment of the head and the heart and their unified, undeniable voice.  This harmony has become masked by the wisdom of experience, prudence and grown-up decisions, difficult struggles, a few successes, and many, many failures.  This is adulthood, my friends, and it is not all they informed me it was going to be at sign-up.  I will be 40yrs old next week.  Living at home. No savings, 401K, equity of any kind, and in debt to this bank and that.  No wife, house, car, children, or girlfriend.  I guess I am a free man, but free to head where?  Free to do what exactly?  

We are more like horses than we would like to think.  As sentient beings we are bridled by the very fact we exist.  We are placed in line by our environments (our coachmen, though we refuse to acknowledge this) and are forced to drag caissons through the storms of living, and we are not given a choice in the matter, in-fact we do not even notice.  Our joints creak alongside the aging wooden framework as it flexes and bows day-in, day-out.  Our eyes, cast downward out of habit, forget that the beautiful skies above are always smiling down at us.  Our shoes wear down to the heels.  We become impatient and resentful from the ceaseless voices of our misguided culture, and many crack under this pressure and embrace the selfish behaviors they repeatedly hear.  We become more deeply entrenched the further that we travel this way, and slowly we forget how to feel the breeze of simply being.  This journey of ours feels fruitless and endless.  

Our design was never meant for this type of strain.  Deep down inside we know this, so we seek the shoulders of friends, lovers, parents, children, and strangers to help ease our burdens because we know that anything is better than pulling this weight alone.  

I feel very much alone, often.  I have been this way since childhood, and it is who I am.  I would give anything to no longer feel this way.  

It's been a long time.  I barely remember what it feels like to simply exist without the weight of being.  However, I know the time will come again when the child buried underneath the layers of adulthood will abandon all the things he thought he needed to know about the world.  Then he will run.  He will run for dear life with the wind at his face, the soil at his feet, completely lost for a moment without these reins.