It’s Friday.
We sit in front of our desks, eagerly waiting for the clock to strike 6 so that we can pack our bags and head out for that much needed beer. The week had been way too long, almost like it was never ending. Luckily you already made plans with the guys. Finally, it will be time to wind down and chill. Talk some shit about your bosses and girlfriends. Make some vulgar remarks about the skimpily dressed girls downtown. And maybe have a drink too many, to aid in forgetting what a hell of a week it had been.
Friday has become the most popular day of the week, for obvious reasons, even making guest appearances in multiple horrendous pop songs. It is the one day when you can forget about work, study, or any of your other responsibilities and get that well deserved break from everything. The one day that marks the beginning of the weekend.
The gateway into your escape from reality.
Humans, I believe, have this innate desire to escape reality. So much so that it defines some of our actions and behaviours. Maybe not just some of them, but most of them.
Okay scratch that.
What if I told you that every decision that you ever made was based off this single goal programmed into your system?
Just take a moment to think about it. How many of your habits, behaviours and mannerisms, are motivated by the desire to escape? How many decisions have you made, believing that it was entirely a free choice, but in reality feeding this inner craving to escape reality? How many of these small decisions have repeated over time to take shape as habits? How many of these habits have persisted over time to become your identity? How much of who you are actually stems from this deep logic programmed into your system?
Still lost? Okay let’s take a step back.
What do you mean by Escaping Reality?
Well to simply put it, to escape reality is to do anything that can temporarily or permanently change the state of existence for an individual.
You mean like doing drugs? Yea well, doing drugs is a part of it. Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, weed (does not fall under drugs), porn, and all these other “sinful” indulgences fall under escaping reality. They alter one’s idea and state of reality temporarily, allowing the individual to live an alternate reality, however momentarily. But escaping reality is not bound to these vices that most would never openly admit to indulging in. Escaping reality expands far beyond that.
Travelling has become one of the most popular modes of escapism. Given how cheap flights have become, people can travel with the same ease of getting tickets to a movie. Speaking of which, movies, concerts, drama productions, street theatres, art exhibitions, are all forms of escaping reality. These environments create the atmosphere for one to take a momentary leap out of their reality and dive into another.
Sometimes you don’t even need a change in the environment. Go ahead and grab a book, flip through its pages and absorb the words. Listen to a song, observing the blending of the melodies and harmonies. Or just sit back and watch the stars. It is that simple to transport yourself into another dimension, completely out of your reality.
The Science behind Escaping Reality
Alright, before you get too conscious about reading this, let me bring you back to the reality of this phenomenon. The idea behind escaping reality is not something merely fluffy and abstract. In fact there is an entire science behind this idea, and supports this notion of humans tending towards escaping reality. This science is a lovely little thing known as: Dopamine.
Dopamine is the chemical that is released by the brain, when it likes what you’re doing. Sort of like the little voice in your head that is motivating you to do all the crazy shit that you wanna do (although Shia LaBeouf might be a good substitute).
Every time you do something that gives you a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction, that’s dopamine getting released into your system. Enjoying that ice-cream? That’s dopamine. What about that coffee? Dopamine as well. Having a smoke? Doing yoga? Watching porn? Yes, yes and yes. Everything from watching cat videos to getting a like on your Instagram photo triggers your dopamine levels and gives you that nice little feeling, earning its reputation as the brain’s “pleasure chemical”.
So what does this have to do with escaping reality?
Escaping reality IS the release of dopamine. Every known idea of escaping reality: meditation, yoga, traveling, bungee jumping, cocaine, sex, everything is what it is because of dopamine. Escaping reality is what the brain wants us to do, it is what our system rewards us for, and makes us do again and again for more rewards. And everything that we do to earn that reward of sweet sweet dopamine, falls under the category of “escaping reality”
Types of Escaping Reality
Before we continue, let me just start referring to “Escaping Reality” as “ER” , to save me some effort and save you some reading time.
Having seen the vast number of possibilities and actions that can fall under the broad category of ER, you must be wondering what is the point if everything can be explained by it. Well as with any umbrella term, there are a few sub-categories that we can split ER into. These sub-categories can be broadly grouped into two main categories: Easy ER and Hard ER.
Easy ER is all the ways in which you can gain almost instantaneous gratification. Drugs are a sure way to get you there. But so are things like watching sports, listening to music, and even scrolling through Facebook. Some might be a little more challenging, like video games and fiction, where a little more effort has to be put in before attaining gratification, although ultimately falling under Easy ER. A large bulk of this category is made up of entertainment modes, allowing us to escape reality with minimal effort.
Hard ER, on the other hand, is much harder (quite evidently). Hard ER are the things which take the most effort, seemingly unrewarding in nature, but the ones that provide us with the greatest sense of escaping reality. The things like maintaining a healthy lifestyle, eating right, exercising, having a good relationship with others, saving money, and all that jazz that your parents constantly nag at you for. The reason they nag so much is because after all their years of experience, they finally realise that these are the things that matter the most, and are the ones which provide the greatest form of escape.
Over the years, we have seen easy ER growing at an increasing rate, with clubs filling out more than ever before, parties being thrown every now and then, entertainment industry booming with more and more ways to trigger our dopamine levels. So much so that many have become slaves to these ways of escaping reality, sustaining themselves and satisfying their system by constantly consuming the multitudes of ways in which we are being showed how to escape reality. Addiction is everywhere, born out of these technologies which feed our desires. Only a few are aware of the paths to truly escape this reality, attaining true liberation, instead of the fictitious forms that we are surrounded by.
Where do we go now?
So where exactly do we end up, escaping this reality? Well, if it is out of this reality then certainly it is not a place that one can go to. It is more of a state of mind.
A state of absolute bliss.
That is the end point. That is the goal and motivation of our existence. That is the great escape.
But how we choose to go there, is entirely up to us. Would you rather have short bursts of bliss? Or be submerged in it at all times? Would you rather take the easy ER or the hard ER? Would you rather live for instantaneous pleasures, or seek for the most absolute state of pleasure? Given that our mind and body is programmed to satisfy this function, there is only one true question:
How are you going to escape reality?
Keep glitching.