have you ever just gotten in your car and driven off into the sunset without an actual plan for where you will end up? do you think you could ever be the kind of person who does that at least once? i fully believe every woman should be “that girl” at least once in her life.
to quote the hilariously unsuave cav (played by talented yasiin bey, bka, mos def) from brown sugar, i’m a goer. i like to go. some days i just hop in my car with a full tank of gas and drive until i don’t feel like driving anymore. or the road gives way to an ocean or field. i might stop off for a meal, take a tour of the city, or just sit in a park and people watch. i don’t have to have a plan or a partner, just a desire to get up and go.
there is something about my thirst for adventure that fuels these missions of aimless wondering. i kind of like the idea that there are all sorts of things waiting for us to be introduced.people. places.pandamonium. peace. whatever is waiting, i want to explore it.
pretty sure i’ve always been this way. when i was younger, i loved spending time with my cousins as we played make-believe in my grandma’s back yard. and when our adult supervision disappeared, we breached the borders of that fenced-in lawn to wreck havoc on the entire neighborhood. there was no part of kansas city untouched by our traveling group of thrill seekers. my favorite times were spent getting indiana jones-lost in swope park on our way to sneak into the pool for a summer swim. yep, ya girl was a juvenile delinquent. i broke into the swope park pool on a regular basis and i feel no shame about it!
i found it just as easy to get lost in a written world as i did in our real-life make-believe worlds. nothing can carry you away on a daring mission of mystery, intrigue, and danger like a book. my mom took us to the library every other week where my brothers and i would load up on as many books as we could carry. i am still guilty of checking out as many books as i can carry – well, not literally because i have switched to an e-reader – but definitely more than i can read before the due date. good habits are just as hard to break as bad habits it seems.
something else i never outgrew was a need to get lost in a new adventure. now that i think about it, that behavior formed in my childhood has completely guided every life decision i have made up to this day. i always choose the more adventurous route. everything from where i’ve chosen to study to where i’ve chosen to live has been about me living outside of conventional comfort zones and stretching my limitations. even the amount of projects i take on confirms my desire to go over being still. my friends are always saying how they don’t understand how i have so much energy to keep up with it all.
maybe it is because i don’t see these things as projects but as ways to continue to stretch my capacity to think, reason, give, and receive.
i also realize i’ve grown perfectly comfortable with doing things alone. this realization has probably been the hardest to accept. it’s not like i enjoy solitude over companionship. i really enjoy being around people. but when it comes to my need to get up and go, i don’t want to hear all the reasons why it can’t be done or shouldn’t be done or it’s not the time to be done. i just want to go.
while i totally understand we can’t live a life constantly on the go, i think i would take my get up and go life any day of the week because i don’t want to ever get to a point when my get up and go has got up and went. like they say, use or loose it!
