Next chapter in the series about my psycho. So, what to do when life refuses to give you what you want. If you have power and money, you can force your way. However, if you do not have either then you can either give up and live in a role your parents and society pigeonholed you or escape. We are the latter type.
There are two fundamental ways of escaping. One is to indulge yourself in something that will make you forget about reality and its problems. The other is to physically move somewhere where people would hopefully appreciate you more. I will begin with the former.
First type escapism is simple. It's just desire to forget about the shit we have here and now and just indulge in a good fictional, book, movie or a video game where world is better and more interesting.
There are many forms of internal escapism. The simplest ones are alcohol and drugs. There are plenty of people who can only do that. I can perfectly understand them. It is much better to drink yourself to death or oblivion, that to clean shit after some retarded twat who was lucky enough to be born of wealthy parents, but thinks he is better than you and deserves what he got while you deserve only shit. The retarded twats would be angry with your life choices but fuck them.
Me and some of my friends do drink every so often, but this is not our primary way of escaping. We have great and wonderful world of fiction and video games at our disposal. Sure, not every book and movie are worth your time, but there are some that do. They provide wonderful experience of how world and society could have been if better people would be in power.
Video games are even better. They are more immersive. The better ones can at least feel like you are in a better world and doing something you much rather do instead of what society willing to offer you.
Some video games have such a good story and writing they deserve a Nobel Prize in Literature. This is truly a medium for intelligent people. Doubly so now that books and especially movies mostly cater to less smart and wise audiences.
There is Japanese anime too. Some titles are as wise and profound as best philosophers. Not to mention wonderful art, created by people who actually understand what appeals to people and why and able to deliver it.
Finally, music. While the most popular artists are the worst garbage possible and not worth your time. However, such pop artists are but a tip of musical iceberg. Music is much bigger than that, dig dipper and you will find many wonderful songs and titles. Once again Japanese are at forefront of that. Yukka, Nakagawa Kentaro, Yuki Kajiura and many others make some of the most wonderful songs out there.
And when there is no any external mediums then people like Fedya can entertain us with his funny and engaging humor. During his childhood, Fedya and his friends invented many interesting and curious ideas on their own and they played games, imagining themselves someone else. I was in a different school at that time, so he told me about it afterwards. Me and my brother too invented a fictional world or two of our own.
The humor is also a form of escapism. Nothing quite as uplifting as reducing current social orthodoxy into a ridiculous joke.
With all of that you can shut the "real life" out of your world and live a much better and wonderful existence. Existence, surrounded by fiction, compere to which reality is like a turd compared to a foie gras.
I write the whole blog about fiction that can make your life better than what it is.
Fiction is wonderful, however, in the end of the day, it is not enough. Sometimes the reality creeps back and annoyingly demand your attention to its ugly mug. A nasty weather or unpleasant people can bring you back to reality you so desperately want to avoid.
One way of dealing with them is to only deal with people and places you like for one or the other reasons. I try to do it and sometimes even develop habit of dealing with the same people I am chill with over and over again.
There is also another thing. No matter how good fiction is, its fundamentally an illusion. You want something concrete and bigger. You want to make the fiction you like into reality. You want it to become life on the ground.
There were many dreamers that dreamed of things bigger than what reality have afforded them. Some of them even managed to get their hands on resources to make their dreams into reality. It is because of people like that we have planes, computers, internet and other such wonderful things.
Yet there is one other a even more grounded form of escapism. A simple physical move from one place to another. You can move a city a country a continent even. I did that. In Russia I felt I will never manage to get ahead in life. Majority of classmates and adults looked down on me and my ideas. It was obvious they will never give me enough power to make things my way or at least enough money to indulge myself into things I love.
Because of that I chose to emigrate from them as far as I could. To Australia to be precise. I can move elsewhere providing there will be better conditions for me. After all, if people do not value you, there is no need to suffer them. Just go and find some different people who will value you. That is why friends who you can pick and choose are better than parents and relatives that cannot be changed.
I did not ask Javier or Tsukasa about their reason for coming to Australia, but I felt it was the same thing. They too wanted to escape places that did not value them and get somewhere better. Together we created an escapist community of sorts. Sure, not everyone of our classmates was like that, for some it was just a career move to advance in a corporate ladder back home. However, we ended up dividing into informal groups friends that somewhat reflect our views and aspirations.
That is escapism and next is the final chapter of these series, melancholy.
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