Escape of reality

Greeting readers,

Originally I planned to do a nostalgia trip, to think about all the places where I have been and write about it - how do my memories look like when I look at them at the present. It did not really work out too well. I started writing about it, wrote something about Spain, something about Russia, something about Israel and Egypt. That was supposed to be part one of the nostalgia trip. But I just couldn’t get “into it”. I did such trips in my mind so much in the past and I enjoyed it as well as suffered because of it. Perception has changed since then. Certainly some random events (smelling something, hearing some song, seeing some scenery and so on) still bring memories about certain places to me but I am no longer starting those sessions.

For example, Israel. For long time, many years after I had returned from there I kept wishing that I could re-experience everything. I promised to myself that someday I would go there again. Why? Because it was an exit from my “normal world”, far away from all routines that I had created and from people that I was accustomed to see. Everything seemed new and fresh – and that had nothing to do with the place though I did not see it back then.

So you could say that I travel to escape my usual life. I would not disagree too strongly about it though I would note that our usual life is another kind of escaping. And that perhaps when I’m travelling I am not escaping but actually doing something totally opposite. In our usual life we create those routines because we like to be in control of everything, to know (to think that we know) what’s going to happen next and routines are supposed to strengthen the feeling of safety. Besides society around us pressures us to create routines to live in a certain pattern, follow certain rules and believe in certain ideas.

It seems to me that these routines are an effort of the mind to avoid seeing what “is” - escape of reality.