Running away from your problems has always been a common solution to dealing with issues, even before Brooke Davis or Lorelai Gilmore made it popular. As someone who frequents this solution, I can tell you exactly what happens when you run away from your problems and why it’s a bad idea.
1. You take the easy way out.
Running away works initially. People talk about “runner’s high” in exercise and it’s true. There’s a certain high that comes from the realization that not all problems need solutions. I’ve never been a very patient person and I never waited to arrive at solutions. Instead, I took the easy way out.
Running away doesn’t teach you to grow as a person. It doesn’t teach resilience or perseverance or strength, which are all important qualities in life.
2. Your problems still exist in this new physical place.
Running away from my problems made me feel empowered. I could simply abandon all the parts of my life that didn’t satisfy me. Didn’t like a summer job? I could quit. Unsatisfied in a relationship? I could sabotage it and run for the hills.
I wrongly believed that my problems didn’t exist in a new physical place. In reality, the things you’re running from will linger beneath your mind’s surface, haunting any new, relatively similar undertaking.
3. You apply a definitive solution to an ongoing problem.
When you run away, you attempt to tie up the loose ends before detangling them. You keep trying to pick up more things and don’t understand why you’re dropping them.
Wouldn’t life be too easy if solving problems meant you could simply get in your car or hop on a plane and leave? It doesn’t take long to realize that emotional ties run deeper than that.
4. It wears away the present.
I’ve also learned that while you can avoid pain to a certain extent, you can’t avoid the bleakness that accompanies it. The biggest danger from running away from your past is what it does to your present. It wears it away.
5. You become afraid to invest.
Unfortunately, I’ve become afraid to live anywhere or love anything completely. I’ve become afraid of investing myself into any experience or person. That’s the real damage: when you’re the person who runs away; you’re never fully present anywhere.
6. You start running from yourself.
Running away from your problems leads to more and more problems. You lose sight of who you could’ve been if you’d actually committed to something, or stuck it out when the going got tough. Instead, you create a world that you have to tip-toe through because it’s full of land mines that haven’t been dealt with.
If you’re someone who runs away from their problems, my advice is to challenge yourself to stay. Leaving is comfortable, but staying is the challenge.
While you may not be able to go back and work through the issues you abandoned, you can start looking forward and being present in any new venture you take on. In the process, you’ll realize that tying up loose ends is the only way to move forward.