Walking Without Worry

Today I went walking down the road without a worry in the world.

So often I have worried about so many things in life. I would worry about who would see me. I would worry about what I was wearing. What people would think about me. What they would think I was doing walking down the road.

I have dealt with this my entire life because it’s just the way that I am.

But I don’t feel that way anymore.

The shadow of fear and doubt that would hang over me before I would go somewhere has started to dissipate and I am letting myself be rid of that fear.

One thing that has helped me is walking on my lunch break at work. I work in a community where there are a lot more people than I am accustomed to. I live in a rural township surrounded by farm fields and forests. I spent the first six years of my life living on a farm off Gingerich Rd that was owned by my great uncle Allen Gingerich. The road was named after my Amish ancestors. There were never any busy streets and sidewalks to walk down. I found joy being surrounded by nature.

Throughout my life I have been an introvert and found joy and happiness in books, movies, magazines, libraries, and quiet places. I would find joy in seeing an empty page to a sketchbook and think of the possibilities that might arise.

Then a time comes in life where people expect you to fit into everything just like a puzzle piece completing a picture they expect to be finished. That includes going to family events, weddings, funerals, and all the other places we are expected to be.

As I have grown older, I have skipped a lot of these things. Even when I was in my twenties I would skip them.

I even skipped going to my own shows that I booked after releasing some of my CDs. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go. There was just this dreadful shadow of fear and doubt looming over me, and the easiest option was to just cancel.

Throughout the years, people would invite me to go somewhere and I would kindly decline. After so long, the invitations stopped. Now I don’t hear from many people. I’m mostly in my own world with the things I enjoy and love.

That brings me back to pushing myself to go walking on my lunch break.

I am making myself get out there and see other people in the world, on the sidewalks and throughout the town. For some people, walking down a sidewalk might be the simplest thing in the world. They probably wouldn’t even think twice about it.

For me, it has been a huge accomplishment.

And today, walking down the road without worrying about who might see me, what I looked like, or what anyone might think, I realized something had changed.

Sometimes overcoming an obstacle doesn’t look like much from the outside.

Sometimes it just looks like someone walking down the road.

But to me, it feels like I am living.

© Nathaniel Maloney. All rights reserved.