The Great Escape

The word ‘escape’ conjures up feelings of being released into freedom; your environment changing from something bad into something better

The notion of trying to escape is nothing new…. Escape to Alcatraz (1979) anyone?

There are now TV shows suggesting our need to change our environs, “Escape to the Country”  and “Race to Escape” spring to mind.  We are further reminded by supplements in newspapers with titles of the same name,  and  endless marketing slogans encouraging us to ‘’escaping the rat race’ or ‘escape holidays’.  Escape the cold, escape the heat. It just goes on and on.

Why are we trying to escape the life we have clearly created for ourselves?.  Have we established an environment that is so awful that we are constantly seeking ways to get away from it?

Perhaps the better question is, “is my life now the life I imagined for myself?”  If it was, would I be so eager to find the escape hatch?  

I was listening to an audio book recently where the author posed the question to listeners:

“How different is the life you are living now to the life you dreamed for yourself in your 20’s?  How did we get from our 20 year old self to where we are now?”    

Did we simply meander along lifes path without too much of a plan and now we are so far away from our dream life that it seems so far out of reach or we need to seek mini-escapes to remind us of the life we once imagined?.

Is there a way we could make small but permanent changes to put our lives back on the path to the dream we once had?  Life is too short to want to escape it.  

What can you do to chart a new map to your dream life and relinquish the need to escape?  For me, I’ve been promising myself for too many years that I will learn yoga!

“But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.  ―Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao