Travel in Both Ways

The bigness of the world is redemption. 
Despair compresses you into a small space,
and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground.
To dig deeper into the self, to go underground,
is sometimes necessary,
but so is the other route of getting out of yourself,
into the larger world, into the openness
in which you need not
clutch your story and your troubles so tightly to your chest
Being able to travel in both ways matters, 
and sometimes the way back into the heart of the question 
begins by going outward and beyond.

- Rebecca Solnit
From The Faraway Nearby