The Greatest Escape
Every now and then, and sometimes more often than that, we all feel the desire to escape our lives. Whether it’s because work is stressing us out or the family is driving us crazy or life itself is not delivering on our expectations – perhaps it’s all of these combined – the need to get away from it all can be overpowering.
Many people envisage dreamy island holidays on hot white beaches as the perfect departure, while others yearn for a full immersive experience surrounded by nothing but the sights and sounds of nature. For some, nothing says detached-from-reality more than an adrenalin-fuelled adventure, while yet others crave the luxury of a darkened 5-star hotel room with soft billowy pillows, full service and uninterrupted sleep.
The problem with all of the above, in my view, is that they are usually temporary, often expensive and, for the average person, sporadically accessible. Worse still is that when you return from any of these diversions, the invigorating effects diminish exponentially with each mundane moment. Reality sucks so much harder after a holiday.
The best kind of escape is filled with infinite choices, costs very little and is always within reach. It allows you to explore the world or travel through time, it lets you embody other people’s lives and feel their emotions, see into the future or delve into an alternate universe; these escapes can scare the wits out of you, have you crying, screaming or laughing out loud, or send shivers from your spine to the souls of your feet.
For anyone willing to invest themselves in the endless possibilities of this form of escape, the return is significant and likely to stay with them for days, months or even years.
The saddest thing, however, is knowing that fewer and fewer people are benefiting from the enriching results of this kind of escape, substituting it for superficial alternatives. My own niece shuns it, at this breaks my heart.
People are prostituting themselves to cheap thrills and temporary deviations, choosing a high GI rush over a slow and considered degustation because the former requires little to no effort on their part. And, just like at the end of a sugar rush, they are likely to be left feeling as unfulfilled as ever, so they go back for more and more in an endless, mind-numbing cycle.
In my life, I have trekked the Camino de Santiago, hauled monoliths in the building of Stone Henge, been pursued through the streets of Portugal by unknown ne’er-do-wells, befriended a robot, hunted mammoths, seen through the eyes of death himself (and herself), walked the streets of Paris, Istanbul, Tehran, Venice, London, and countless other cities in decades past and present. I have witnessed magic and pain, goodness and evil, love and loss.
Even at a time when the whole world was shut behind closed borders and doors, I continued to travel.
I could only have done all this by giving myself up to the words on the pages of countless novels and escaping to the many worlds contained within. There are so many out there waiting to be explored at a moment’s notice. I only hope that one day my niece, and many others, will discover that reading is truly the greatest escape of all.