On Escapism
The only thing I can come up with… is to forget
I made the solemn oath to myself today "No more SUITS!"
Of course, I'm talking about the television series that insists on providing incremental nothingness each 45 minutes it sucks from your life, while continuing to drag you along by the short and curlies as you hope clicking on the "next episode" button might reveal some semblance of closure... but it doesn't, and you continue to feel the pointlessness of it all in the depths of the darkness of your soul as you fall from episode to episode.
"Also enough of this YA fiction stuff too!"
I mean usually, I’m not even interested enough in this wildly popular, bestselling, romantic comedy to read its back cover, never mind open its pages but I don't know what the hell happened to me in January, it was like my thinky intellectual mind blacked out.
I assure you that under different seasonal and geographical circumstances, you’d see that I only read important books by important people in important places. You can ask my friends. Just last week I was reading Emerson for the sixth time. (I told everyone about it. Repeatedly.)
So why then, even when I have no shortage of things to dive into, do I insist on dedicating 20 hours to a mindless activity of watching a pointless television show or reading this simplistic nonsense about two co-workers pretending to hate each other despite their undeniable sexual chemistry?
The only thing I can come up with… is to forget.
Forget the responsibilities that weigh down on me, forget the inadequacies constantly poking me around what I haven’t achieved but should have, forget that I feel lost around where I’m going in life, and again… the lists goes on: list of things that I should do, list of things I should stop, list of things I should not be doing but I do...
Even though as I go on in life the contents of this giant dark list might change but this cloud is always there, hovering over my entire existence and preventing me from being present or content in any moment ever...
And so I escape...
Escape to a weighted blanket in the form of images and sounds,
Escape into another time, another place, another world,
Escape into the old grainy pages of Harry Potter books on which the sans serif letters fall, composing the language of longing and memory, harking back to a world I don’t remember and didn’t experience but still feel drawn to,
Escape into the same corny episodes of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. because it's funny, it's colourful, it's set in a bright and cheerful apartment in NYC with lots of light and colour and characters who wore colourful clothing and were caricatures and was theatrical in a very simple and childish way.
But lately though, I've been escaping a lot. Like a whole lot.
You know there are just those times when we need that escape- to surround ourselves with another world as a cushion of sorts incubating us in a womb that shields us from the harshness of reality.
I think when we're in pain or overwhelmed I think we look for an escape to feel like we aren't in the life we're in. Where we seek a reflection of that life, to meditate on, to seek therapy for our problems by seeing them cast in a different life.
An altered reality to showcase what ours can come to be.
I think everyone needs an escape sometimes.
So I want you to know the next time that no matter how guilty or corny you feel to watch that episode of the office over and over again. It's okay : )
Movie Recommendation
Everything Everywhere All At Once: Oh My holy bagel! It was one of few good movies I've seen in a while. By the end of it I was just crying and laughing hysterically. Surprisingly, this movie is extremely extremely intelligent and extremely dumb, very moving and un believably silly at same time, all while making a powerful exploration on Nihlism.
If nothing we do matters then the only thing that matters is what we do.
Music Recommendation
Book Recommendations
Reviews for books I read this month:
- The Brothers Karamazov (Rating: 4.2/5)
- It Ends With Us (Rating: 3/5)
- Elanor & Park (Rating 4/5)
- Milk and Honey (Rating 2/5)