Tangled in Roots

Have you ever felt what its like to have one foot stuck the rest of you trying to shake free, avoid falling flat on your face and all the while continuing moving forward.

You’ve got somewhere to be but you don’t quite know where yet but everyone else around you seems to be moving in full gear, sure their pant legs are getting stuck on brambles and they stumble over a few stones but only a few, only a few seem to get stuck in a tangle of roots just like you.

“Keep going, c’mon its not that bad.” They tell you as they run past barely out of breath. “We all run into obstacles.”

“Yeah but we’re stuck” you think to myself, smiling at them and shaking your leg once again. “Stupid foot, don’t stay stuck, you can’t stay stuck, you have more to do.”

When you are utterly exhausted from trying to get out, you decide to take a break, to enjoy the forest around you, otherwise why else have this marathon in such beautiful scenery.  The leaves are beautiful and the air seems fresh and healing when you aren’t fighting against your stuckness. “Lazy,” you hear someone mutter behind you.

You know you’re not lazy, you know you’ve worked harder than they have even if your progress doesn’t show it. But you think of how everyone else is moving forward faster than you and you start to question. Am I really that stuck, am I just choosing to stay stuck? Am I just not putting in enough effort,  am I just lazy?

So you get up again because you can’t be lazy, you need to be able to at least keep up. You manage to look at the situation analytically and get your foot out. As you run trying to catch up you find someone else who is stuck. Waist high in a hole, you stop to help pull them out and run with them, trying to help them shake off the dirt and leaves from their ordeal even if you yourself still have dirt lines on your face.

You smile as you over take the person who called you lazy. When you aren’t stuck you are brilliant, a force to be reckoned with.