What’s So Bad About Escape?
Sometimes we can’t hold the weight of the world on our shoulders — and we shouldn’t have to
Escapism gets a bad rap.
A month or so back it was intimated during a political discussion that our indulgence in it is why we find ourselves in the situation we’re in. Climate change, abortion bans, capitalism, Donald Trump…all of it is a result of our tendency to seek refuge in that which is not real. Our conditions would improve and the existential threats on the horizon would all but vanish if only we turned off the TV, stopped going to the cineplex, and started getting real!
I reject this.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t take these things seriously. Climate change is real, the government has no place in the womb, and some German guy with a beard wrote three voluminous texts critiquing capitalism that remain relevant to this day. We must treat the issues pertinent to our times with the gravity they deserve!
But we also have to work, usually at jobs we didn’t choose, because our realities are thrust upon us. We find ourselves in places where we don’t quite fit because that’s the way of the world. We have mountains of bills to pay and complicated personal lives to somehow navigate through. Sure, we get to fall in love and experience other niceties but we must also endure real heartache, grief, and despair.
It’s only to natural to seek a refuge.
I drank a lot the week my father died.
The day he shuffled off of this mortal realm everyone — and I do mean everyone — showed up at our home with food and drink in tow. There were antipasto platters and hot entree’s and beer and wine and whiskey. Makes sense for a repast, but the day someone dies? It’s just how we do things here in Jersey. At least my family anyway.
It’s not that we’re a ridiculous lot who just finds any reason to party. It wasn’t a party. We were all devastated. I certainly was. Only two days prior he had asked me what I’d tell people about him after he died. He kind of blind sided me with it and in retrospect I can say that I didn’t take his question seriously. I gave him platitudes about how he still had much more living to do. Maybe I should feel guilty about that but it’s not like he was terminally ill or anything. He just never woke up that one Saturday morning.
I was the one who touched him. He was the kind of cold that can’t be explained. I was the one who gave him CPR but I couldn’t breathe life back into him. I was the one who made those dreaded phone calls one must make when the reality of the situation becomes all too clear. And I was the last person to see him alive a scant few hours earlier.
When food was placed in front of me I’d eat it. And when someone handed me a drink, I was all too eager to imbibe. It’s all I knew how to do in those moments. There’s no handbook on how to grieve properly. And so I drank.
It wasn’t sustainable. I didn’t want it to be. I’d have to return to my life any day now, as all those who surrounded me days earlier had already. I had to go back to work. I’d have to plaster on a fake smile of appreciation whenever anyone would express condolences. I’d have to figure out how just get on with things. It would ultimately just be me with my thoughts. Each and every one about him.
It was torture.
My mind needed a break.
That’s when I started binge watching David Lynch’s early-90’s TV series, Twin Peaks.
I don’t know if it was the mystery behind Laura Palmer’s murder, Kyle MacLachlan’s portrayal of the quirky FBI Special agent Dale Cooper, or the portrait of the All-American town and the darkness beneath the surface that drew me in but each and every minute of it provided a most welcome distraction. For a couple of hours each night I was granted a reprieve from my grief.
When we lose ourselves in the latest Marvel film or 30 year old cult TV series on Netflix or anything else, it’s not because we’ve decided to shirk our responsibilities. It’s not an act of willful neglect. We aren’t contributing to societal downfall.
I couldn’t prevent my father’s death. I also can not single handedly reduce carbon emissions. These are forces more powerful than any one person. While we obviously can not revive the dead, the solution to other issues, such as climate change, aren’t exactly clear. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t care, we just have to understand our place in all of this. No one person is equipped to bear the full weight of these things at all times. I’d posit that we have yet to figure out how to collectively deal with them as well. All this being taken under consideration I think that we must take the escapism of others and deal with it compassionately. We owe ourselves the same.
I could have kept drinking. Even worse, I could have turned down an even darker path. But instead, I decided to watch well produced TV shows, I took in every movie I damn well pleased, I picked my guitar back up and actually got kind of good at it, I even started going to museum and on hikes. These are all forms of escape but they’re something else as well: reminders of what we live for and that which must be preserved.