Escapisms

Today I saw someone looking quite sad. Ten minutes later, I walked by him again and he seemed quite happy, but concentrating hard on his computer screen. I stole a glance at what he was doing and noticed that he was playing a video game, concentrating hard on shooting various targets.

It made me wonder- most of the things that make us happy are the ones that take us away giving us an escape from reality. Take playing video games for instance- people hide away in a virtual world where they can be who they want to be, with no pressure from society, behave the way they want to behave, kill who they want to kill, with absolutely no judgments. It’s as if you take on the identity of someone you want to be but can’t be in the real world, with none of your prevalent problems. But are these outlets of escapism really the way to solve ones problems? Does the momentary loss of your problem mean that’s its gone and you don’t need to worry about it anymore? Some people say that playing video games makes them forget about reality and when they are done playing, they feel a lot better without really addressing the problem, having already vented out their frustration. However, this is more suppression than problem solving. Still, it is common to see people who have been through a lot hiding themselves in video games, making realties which appeal more to them than their present state of affairs. Similarly, whilst listening to music or watching a movie, we are able to hide away in a song or story, where a reality is created for us. This reality is one we want, or something we relate to but are unable to express (which is expressed for us through the movie or song) and hence we enjoy doing these things.

In the end, a lot of the things we do for enjoyment are in fact ways for us to escape from pressing issues, enabling us to find an alternative happiness.