My friend and I were daydreaming about leaving Moscow Idaho. It was a sunny spring day, as we drove the Moscow Pullman highway east into Idaho. I don’t remember if we were in my Silverado, or in her Subaru, but we talked of how beautiful it would be to visit the National Parks in Utah right at that moment.

As our discussion covered the Colorado river, the red rocks, the abundance of open land, and incredible places we could visit – it was as if the idea became tangible and began to take shape. We both grew quiet. She quietly said “but we can’t go yet, we have finals next week”.

I don’t remember exactly what I replied, but I was often truculent those days, and I challenged her perspective.

Why couldn’t we leave? Of course we would miss the final examination next week, and maybe we would fail the class, but what was really stopping us from doing just that? Why not just head for the mountains right then, and figure the rest out on the way? Does the fact that we had already completed three years of college mean we have to finish our final year? What was really stopping us from dropping our plans then and there, on the Moscow Pullman Highway, and just continuing our drive across the continent?

It’s a choice that keeps us.

I think this was the message of The Truman Show, when our beloved protagonist chose to leave – there was nothing that could stop him. Storms, false-friends, and the entire community organized against him wasn’t enough to keep him there.

There is a great freedom that comes with the realization that we have the power to leave, that we are no trapped, that we have a choice – and that very same breath of freedom also brings the mantle of responsibility.

If we choose to stay, we also choose to accept the consequences of staying. If we leave, we bear both the good and the bad that comes with that. As it is written in Galatians 6 “for whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap”.