The Difference Between Leaving and Running

On Scotland, exile, and finding a way home

I have been thinking a lot about leaving.

Not vacation leaving. Not romantic leaving. Not the Instagram version with a passport, a pint, a train window, and a caption about new beginnings.

Actual leaving.

The kind where you are not entirely sure whether you are being brave or breaking.

The kind where you look around at the life you built and realize there may not be enough left of it to keep standing in the same place.

The kind where home becomes a question instead of an address.

I was born in Glasgow and raised in Canada.

That fact has always sat inside me like a second pulse.

Scotland was not just a place on a passport. It was family. Accent. Story. Weather. Humour. Football. Songs. The ache of something inherited but not fully inhabited.

Canada was the life.

Scotland was the origin.

For most of my life, that was enough.

Then life began to come apart in ways I could not manage by nostalgia.

Work became uncertain. Family became complicated. Fatherhood became painful. Faith was stripped of its old costume. The future became smaller, meaner, more practical.

Rent.
Income.
Court.
Access.
Groceries.
Debt.
Emails.
Silence.
Shame.

That is not poetry.

That is Tuesday.

And when Tuesday becomes unbearable for long enough, a man begins to ask dangerous questions.

Could I go home?

Would Scotland take me back?

Would I be running?

Would I be surviving?

Would my son understand?

Would I?

There is a difference between leaving and running, but it is not always obvious at first.

Running is when you leave because you refuse to face the truth.

Leaving is when you go because the truth has become clear.

Running is fantasy.

Leaving is obedience.

Running says, Somewhere else, I will become someone else.

Leaving says, Somewhere else, I may be able to become responsible again.

Running abandons duty.

Leaving may be the only way to recover the strength to fulfill it.

That is the distinction I am trying to make.

I do not want to disappear.

I do not want to become a ghost father with better scenery.

I do not want to turn Scotland into a costume for failure.

But I also do not want to confuse staying with virtue if staying only means sinking.

Men do that.

We call it endurance when it is really paralysis.

We call it loyalty when it is really fear.

We call it sacrifice when it is really the refusal to make a decision.

There are seasons when the brave thing is to remain.

There are other seasons when the brave thing is to leave cleanly, humbly, and without pretending the leaving does not hurt.

If I go to Scotland, it cannot be as an escape from fatherhood.

It has to be for fatherhood.

To find work.
To find footing.
To find housing.
To find family.
To find enough peace to become useful again.

A father does not owe his son collapse dressed up as proximity.

He owes him love, truth, effort, and a life that is not constantly falling through the floor.

Of course, distance has a cost.

Any man who pretends otherwise is lying.

You cannot FaceTime your way around absence. You cannot send enough messages to replace being in the stands, in the car, in the kitchen, in the boring ordinary nearness where love usually does its best work.

Presence matters.

A lot of men learn that too late.

But broken nearness has a cost too.

So does chaos.

So does fear.

So does a father who stays physically close but spiritually frantic.

So does a man who has no plan except to keep surviving in the same burning room and call it love.

I am trying to learn the difference.

Scotland may be home.

Or it may be a place where I remember how to build one.

Either way, the question is not simply, Where can I go?

The question is:

What kind of man would I be going there to become?

Because leaving only matters if it leads to responsibility.

Otherwise it is just geography.

And I am too old now to confuse movement with change.

That is one of the humiliations of middle age.

You discover that the scenery is not the problem.

You can cross an ocean and bring the same fear with you. The same anger. The same debts. The same habits. The same unfinished prayers. The same need to be understood. The same temptation to turn pain into identity.

A new country will not make a new man.

But sometimes a man needs new ground to do old work.

The work of getting up.

The work of finding income.

The work of making peace with ordinary limits.

The work of praying without performing.

The work of becoming safe.

The work of loving a child without making that child responsible for whether his father survives.

That last one matters most.

A son should not have to feel like the anchor holding his father in the world.

He should be allowed to be a son.

Free to grow.
Free to play.
Free to love.
Free to be angry.
Free to change.
Free to miss his father without managing him.
Free to know that his father’s life is his father’s responsibility.

That is part of what leaving, if it happens, has to mean.

Not abandonment.

Responsibility.

Not punishment.

Rebuilding.

Not drama.

Discipline.

A father can say, I am going because I need to become steady.

But then he has to become steady.

He has to work.

He has to answer messages without flooding them.

He has to keep promises.

He has to send what he can.

He has to make a room in his life that is not imaginary.

He has to become the kind of man his son can visit without walking into wreckage.

He has to make home real.

That is the burden.

And perhaps the mercy.

Because home is not merely where you are from.

Home is where love becomes dependable.

It is where the kettle is on.
Where the bed is made.
Where the bills are faced.
Where the door can open.
Where the boy can arrive and not be asked to rescue the man.

I do not know yet where that will be.

Toronto.
Glasgow.
Edinburgh.
Somewhere between the life I had and the life I still have to build.

But I know this much.

If I leave, I cannot leave as a fugitive from love.

I have to leave as a man under orders from it.

And if I stay, I cannot stay as a martyr to my own fear.

I have to stay as a man willing to become useful where he stands.

Either way, the work is the same.

Become steady.

Become truthful.

Become useful.

Become a father whose love makes life lighter, not heavier.

That is the difference between leaving and running.

Running is escape from responsibility.

Leaving, rightly done, is a painful form of it.

And home, if it is ever found, will not be given by geography alone.

It will be built by the man love raises there.