Still Runnin Against the Wind

I can’t seem to tire of the movie “Forrest Gump”. Perhaps it’s because it seems to be shown on TV every weekend. Perhaps the backdrop of American society through the decades of the 60s, 70s and 80s speaks to my memories of growing up. Or maybe it’s just an entertaining movie. Whatever the reason, I keep flipping the channel back to good ol’ Forrest whenever I notice it playing.



Last night was no different. I was watching the NFL playoff game and occasionally checking out the news when I came across Forrest. He had just met Jenny and his legs were kept straight by heavy metal braces. I watched for what seemed to be the thousandth time as bullies began to chase little Forrest, bent on hurting him. Jenny yells “Run Forrest. Run!” he takes off stiff legged, straining against the braces, then suddenly in a burst of energy his knees bend, the braces break into dozens of pieces and he begins to run. He runs with speed and abandonment. He runs. “Once I started to run, I just kept on running.” In almost every scene in the movie, Forrest always comes back to running.


Forrest always loved Jenny. From the moment he met her, he knew they were like “peas and carrots”. But Jenny kept going her own way. Dealing with her pain, her disappointment, she’d come in and out of Forrest’s life. Forrest still believed in Jenny. Even as she left him over and over again.


There is an especially poignant scene where Jenny returns to Forrest. On a rainy Alabama night they make love. Jenny leaves again. Forrest does what comes natural. He began to run. Over three years he ran. “Mama said you always have to outrun your memories ‘til you can stop.”


In the background, Bob Seger is singing “Runnin Against the Wind”. It’s a song I know well. I hear the song in my mind:


“Years keep going past
found myself alone . . .
farther from my home”


Seger laments his struggles in his life, how he’d been let down by friends, taken wrong turns, finds himself alone, a long way from his home.


“still runnin against the wind,
I’m older now and still runnin
against the wind.”


I find myself putting my life experiences into that movie, that song. I’m not sure if I’m Forrest or Jenny. Both ran. Both ran to outrun their memories and their pain. At the end, they were together. Their home was with each other.


I run almost every day. As I run my mind replays the days and nights with my ex. We too, were like “peas and carrots”. Like Seger’s song, there were times when I “guess I lost my way”. But, I always found myself home. I don’t have that anymore. Like Forrest I’m running alone, trying to outdistance the memories of my life with the only woman I’ve ever loved. No matter how many steps I take, how many laps I run, how fast I sprint down the backstretch, I can’t outrun my memories and my broken dreams.


I know there will come a day when my run stops. They’ll be a day when I don’t have to keep striding down the track to stay a few steps ahead of my memories of her, of our life together.


So I keep running. I’m free when I run and life is as it should be. The fences here no longer exist. The painful memories fade. The wind is at my back.