“Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what’s going on.”
– Haruki Murakami, Kafka on The Shore
Why do we imagine ourselves in another so often?
What is it about our reality that scares us so much?
Often life gets overwhelming. Things get intense. If you’re an overthinker like me, the dark hours of the night are where the most insignificant things become a state of emergency for our populated imagination. It is these times we have two choices; to let those thoughts manifest or to escape. In fact, psychologists actually recommend escaping. Author Shirley Jackson says ““No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.” Truuuuue.
If we are saying that “we all need to escape sometimes”, how much escapism is healthy?
One Murakami novel will make me appreciate the small things in life. Too many Murakami novels make me feel like selling everything I own, moving to Japan and living alone for the rest of my life.
I think the most significant thing is to question “the why.”
Anything can be escapism if we are using it to avoid our unpleasant reality.
When does escapism become avoidance?
My hope is that the novels we read, the series we watch and the music we listen to will motivate us to step back into our reality, ready to take on that state of emergency - even if it is just the fact our friend left us on seen last night.
amandla
vaporwave
izzy806
2087
discoholicmusic
germansingergirl
prguitarman
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
