Escapism Heals or Hurts.

You ever just engage in one of your favorite activities, but find yourself thinking about your life? Be it having time to yourself playing games, making art, dancing, singing, or listening to music? There’s this awareness that manages to seep through the places you used for self-expression, or escapism. No matter what you do, it just sits in the back of your mind waiting to be addressed. Then it pretty much dulls the experience you’re currently having because you know you should be investing more time into it. Time that should be spent figuring out how to make a career or bigger goal happen, processing emotional turmoil that has been repressed, facing something you’ve been in denial about, making ends meet to keep the comforts of your current life, etc. Eventually, you can hardly even return to the things that you once considered a way to de-stress because they’re just adding to the idea that you haven’t done anything in the areas of life that actually matter to you. The most notable underlying cause of this is considered to be depression. You can’t face yourself, nor do you have the energy or interest on doing so anymore. Or at least, that’s the illusion of the depression. So it’s just something that lingers and maintains itself. Even if you don’t have any kind of depression, there’s always that part of yourself that knows you’re not fully in alignment with what you should probably be doing. In premise, escapism isn’t even really a bad thing to have in one’s life, so much as the perspective on it. Someone should be able to do whatever it is they want to do in order to maintain some level of sanity towards real life events. Life gets overwhelming, and there’s only so many things you can do as an individual that could be considered fun, productive, and healthier options for some of the habits that have been formed. The problem mostly lies in the fact that it becomes a crutch to lean on, to negate the fact that there are responsibilities or self-promises to act on. It’s not even that you’re not fully aware that the grass would likely be greener on the other side, but that there was a comfort and familiarity built with those activities.

Next thing you know, you have to find new places to run to, new ways to escape the inevitable. Which then just adds to the fact that you had rather spent more time indulging in other forms of distraction instead of doing something you would consider progressive. Now you’re in a worse place than before and choosing to take a backseat in your own mind. Watching your life pass you by, day after day, month after month. And then you have to look back and realize that so much time has gone by, and yet nothing actually happened. What else did I do aside from binging this series I like watching? How many hours did I sink into yet another video game? Which one of these group chats is actually going to give me a connection with someone? Am I just using social media, or is it now using me? These are some of the questions that may come to mind when confronting yourself about it. Now, to be fair, some of us are just much more capable and better off than others due to health reasons or social classes. This doesn’t always excuse us, because naturally life can change for any of us for better or worse, but it paints a better picture of things. In fact, sometimes I find myself thinking about things from a fairly unjustified fear-based angle. “What if I get in an accident and lose both of my hands? Then there’s no way I could make anything!” or “I should exercise more, because in the odds of me becoming a paraplegic, I’ll regret not having used my limbs.” That’s rooted in a bunch of anxiety, mostly within range of whatever the thing is that you’re avoiding. Truthfully, the worst case scenario is usually that you just didn’t do what you were supposed to, or maybe you did very little of it. Some progress is still better than no progress of course.

Escapism in essence is the act of avoiding your life in favor of temporary means and instant gratification. I mean, why spend a bunch of time doing hard work and having often depressing outcomes to eventually reach a better outcome in the long run? It’s definitely much easier to just do the other option that gives you a “reward” much sooner. I could level up in a game, when I’m not leveling up in life. I could have a romantic-life through reading a book and embodying one of the characters in my imagination, I could fantasize about being a character I like, or having a group of friends/family that I idealized. You can get as lost as you want in either version of it, but you still have to anchor yourself in the reality you live. On a more positive note, that same level of escapism is what creates many of the things that we all enjoy in entertainment, or even practical things. Someone chose to escape to a world of their own, and created one of the best-selling novels. Someone chose to escape the typical way of processing thoughts and emotions, so they created music that represents it. Someone lived through the negative aspects of a bad habit and now helps others in those areas. So on and so forth. And that then branches out to the other people who decide to interact with what you’ve created, and they can relate, and therefore becoming inspired themselves. Maybe I had to escape and watch a bunch of movies, or play games, or read books in order to get the idea or inspiration that I needed for something I can apply myself to. Naturally, there’s the other end of it that isn’t as great of a decision. Like doing copious amounts of drugs and alcohol to the point where you can’t regulate yourself. “Self-medicating” is the term often used by these people who are more susceptible to this type of escapism. It’s a means of justifying the behaviors and being in-denial about the long-term affects, but it’s paired with addiction on a greater level. Many lower, less dangerous forms of escapism can become addictions. Some even develop into that without you realizing it, and it’s now a normalized part of yourself. Sometimes I’ll play out random scenarios in my head that don’t have any real utility other than feeding my imagination. Some of those scenarios can be useful, like figuring out what would be a likely outcome of something given the information I’ve presently attained. Or, maybe generating a narrative for something I want to create for myself or for someone else.

Personally, I grew up as someone who had plenty of time to be with my own imagination. I wanted to build things, experiment with the what-ifs, and think about situations that I likely would never find myself in. Sometimes for the “Just in case I end up in this situation, I’ll know what to do.” But really, even if I did end up in that situation it’s usually when I don’t expect it and not in the same setting or tone that I had imagined it. So no, the scenario in my mind didn’t prove as useful. It’s only when you actually participate in the world around you that you actually gain the real knowledge and experience to navigate situations. That also comes with the detriment that if you experience things enough times, you’ll assume another instance won’t make any real difference. Which says to me that it’s important to both facilitate the mental repository (Imagination, memory, creativity, insight, curiosity, and intuition) with the physical world (Exploration, sensory, communication, action, and instinct). In other words, it’s okay to escape so long as you don’t forget to live life in your actual body, with your actual circumstances and with your actual consequences. If I do a reasonable amount of things in a day, then by the time I engage in activities that I consider escaping to, I feel much better about it because I didn’t ignore my duties. It was just an addition to my day and the things that I’ve done. No, that doesn’t mean go through a good day with working or learning only to then drink your liver away at night like a true bastard. Again, this is all about healthy interpretation. Don’t get lost in all your anime waifus/husbandos to the point where you don’t talk to actual people, or develop a God complex because in your mind you’re perceiving yourself in positions that are greater than others. It’s important that we understand our shortcomings to face them, and then find the solutions that we could use to alleviate those issues that we have with ourselves, or the world. If not, I guess someone could always just keep escaping until they’re out of this life. Maybe that’s the greatest escape one could have. Death. Anyway that took a pretty dark turn, the point is to just be more mindful of it and put some things into action that can keep you rooted in reality. At least rooted enough to not lose the plot.