Words by Natasha Fracchiolla
Sometimes we chase too hard. We chase it because we’re so sure we can catch it; we keep chasing, stretching, panting, sweating. For it. Til our lungs are shaking and our toes are chafing through our sneakers of sorrow and desire.
We chase. Because we need it. We believe it’ll heal us. It’ll take away our brokenness and fix us up good and proper. Maybe. We believe if we trick it, and trap it to be all ours, we will inhale its elixir of life that’ll render us wealthy, healthy, youthful and loved. Maybe we’ll mean something more out there; maybe we won’t. But we chase anyway.
Some years have felt a lot like this, for a lot of us, a lot of the time. The sprint towards a better day, a bigger deal, a better piece, a best version of ourselves as writers, women, men, mothers, fathers, artists, entrepreneurs, wives, daughters, husbands, sons, friends and creative humanitarians. I was there too. I laced my shoes with the rest of them, and I chased after it. Hard, hungry, hopeful, crazy. Til “it” moved, and it moved some more and it kept moving til it just wasn’t there anymore. I couldn’t see it.
At some point along the chase, we lose it. Or do we lose ourselves? Our sense of sight…of orientation…of feeling. We forget what we’re chasing, or why we wanted it in the first place.
Instead, we deep dive into the mania of more; the catch, the win. I know this to be true because I have jumped off the edge of my universe, panting for air. And I learnt a hard lesson – that the catch is not the thing. And nor is the chase. None of this is the “it” we need, to make something better.
The more we hunt, pant, sweat, hanker after “it”, the more we stand to lose. The further on we run, the further and further away we get from home – where the heart is.
Because, actually, there is no “it”. Not in the pressure, not in the self-loathing, not in the long, late hours of insomnia, not in the chest pains and heartache, not in bringing the ones you love back to life, not in the desperate need to snatch it and smother it and hold on tight. To it.
What we really ought to be chasing are the stars. The slow breaths. The belly laughs, the bird on a lamp post, the sunshine, the thunder storms, the softly arched rainbows, the happy heaviness of a crystal child cradled in our arms, that convo over a frothy coffee, those old photographs in the top shelf box, the window you sit at when you write, that day you cried until you split open but felt better, that snowflake you felt on your eye lash, the crack of fire splints by camp light and the many many kisses waiting to meet your lips.
The very thing you’re chasing is inside you. “It” cannot be caught. “It” cannot be priced. “It” doesn’t exist existentially. It hangs low for you to feel, and to pick and to suckle from its earth. This is the true chase. And it requires no running at all. Just the thrill of being.
And when you stop seeking it and for an instant, you just find the tiniest way to feel “it”, there will be a self-sanctifying enoughness that comes; that will wash over your ailing feet, and burning mind and pounding heart. The peace will chase after you. And the only thing to catch, will be the heat of your breath, in the godliness of it all.