Claustrophobia
Have you ever felt claustrophobic in the universe?
I passed two women today, talking . . . young women, full of gumption and make-up and big ideas, one saying, "I just want to get the hell out of this city for awhile." I've heard that before. I've said that before. Problem is, young people are saying exactly that in every city in the world--in Memphis, in New York, in Bangladesh, in Sydney. They're saying it in all the wide-open empty spaces in between. They've been saying it for millenia, and they'll be saying it for a few more.
We all feel that way sometimes, like we just want to get the hell out of where we are. When we're young, we think that will fix it--that getting to somewhere else is all we need. And so we do. And do. And do.
And at some point, we start to realize that folk in all the other places are also feeling antsy, and running around, and flying to our own home town to get away from theirs (which we've flown to), and that none of us are accomplishing this thing we're trying to do. When we're young, we say, "There has to be something more," but the more we try to run around and find it, the more elusive it becomes.
So the mind tries to explain this feeling of stuck-here-ness. Maybe if we could fly, if we weren't stuck here on the ground? And Orville and Wilbur and a few thousand jet pilots do it, but they still don't get anywhere else. Or maybe it's this planet, this oxygen-addiction we all share, and maybe if we could leave, then . . . ? But no, Neil and a hundred or so other people managed even that one, and they're still here with all the rest of us. Sometimes I think, maybe, if I could truly soar all the vast spaces between the galaxies, if I weren't bound by any walls at all . . .
But then I realize that I'd only find great looming black walls of emptiness, made of *nothing*, and would be even more isolated and imprisoned than before--something like the realization that hits rural youth in the American West somewhere around age 16, when they realize that sweeping blue skies and wide-open deserts can be as claustrophobia-inducing as skyscrapered city streets are to urban youth.
So there has to be something more, and suddenly a new realization hits, that it's not the confining nature of where I am that's penning me in, but my approach to overcoming it. It won't work to find a different place, to travel further or fly higher than before. It won't work to get the hell out of this city, because running away isn't the answer.
Maybe it all comes down to methodology. Maybe, if I can't get far enough away, I can get close enough, can impact where I am and make it a little more like where I want to be. If I can't run away from the walls, can't escape by flying, maybe I can change them, make them less confining by making them more something that springs from me, something created by my choice, by my hand, by my vision.
And so I start to reach out, to rebuild the walls the way I want them built--and I bump smack into those adventure-eyed young people saying, "I just want to get the hell out of this city." If I build new walls, those walls will still confine these girls, and because they do that they'll still confine me too. As long as it's walls I'm building, I'm going to be stuck inside them along with everyone else, even if they're my walls.
So what I need to be doing is pulling down walls, pulling down barriers, not just the ones around me but the ones around everyone. Because there's no such thing as a one-way wall; what restricts someone else, ultimately, restricts me too. And if I ever want to be free of this sense of claustrophobia, I need a universe without walls, a universe where *everyone*, not just me, can get the hell out of this city.
I know I can't tear down all the walls in one lifetime. But if even my dream of freedom isn't going to be stifled and extinguished, then I have to keep trying. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll have another lifetime to keep working, and good friends and even good not-friends working beside me . . . and then another lifetime after that, and after that. And even if other people work against me, building walls, so long as I'm trying my *thoughts* are free, and I have the right to dream. If I quit, even my dreams will die, and I might not even remember I was ever claustrophobic in the first place.
February 16, 1999