A Place to Hide

Call it what you will.

Sometimes I see the frontier as a place to hide more than anything else. We have called it a place of progress; a place to start anew. But, a progression to anything only means you are abandoning something else. When you start anew, your are forsaking another way of life. Maybe that is for the better, and maybe it is not.

If the frontier is no longer a place, it most certainly is a concept. It may not be a place to which we physically escape, but we certainly escape there in some conceptual sense. I know I do. It's easier that way.

I had this saved as a draft, dating back to 31 December 2012.

~

Well, shit.

It's the last day of 2012, and the frontier is calling to me again. As I've mentioned before, I use the term "frontier" pretty loosely. One rather antiquated view of the frontier is that--for some people--it was an ever-present mental release, if not a physical one. Whether it was pursued or not, the frontier was out there. Sometimes just knowing that you have options adds that little extra ounce of hope to life. Hope makes everything a little brighter. Well, obviously, there isn't really a frontier anymore. So, my concept is more of a figurative frontier; a frontier that is an idea that I try to keep kindled in my mind in order to maintain a small modicum of hope. What that idea is, I don't really know. And, more importantly, I know less about why I feel hopeless than I know of the nameless, figurative concept of the frontier. 

The new year is a mile marker, and not really much more than that. It marks the passage of the concept of linear time, and that's all. 

The Frontier as Motivation.

The frontier is a curious thing. To many people in American history--Anglo-American folks, anyway--it has represented things like endless opportunity, hope, and independence. It was something to be pursued, and pursued in earnest. To other folks--those who called the frontier home--the idea of the frontier as an object to be obtained by others only meant an impending, if not inevitable, doom.

Doom. Inevitable doom. God, that is an awful feeling. As far as life goes, I wish I could say that I pursued hope, but I feel like it is more often that I am fleeing doom more than anything else. I suppose there isn't a difference, when you leave perspective out of it. Maybe motivation is the more curious thing. 

I don't know why I think about the frontier as a concept, rather than a place and point in time. Academically, I study it and the way it tends to permeate isolated aspects of our cultural history. But, I think that is more an effect than a cause. There is a lot that I don't know about myself, though. Or, perhaps I do, but I just don't want to think about it. It's easier that way.