When we look at all the possibilities for escapism and entertainment and imagination, worlds of fantasy and adventure and excitement: we seem to have this need for something that feels great, it feels like a big adventure, it feels exciting, it feels wonderful.
We just can’t be fully satisfied with something that’s just OK.
Now, being just OK is amazing.
Compared to being in a bad state, just being in a level, OK state is really an amazing thing when you compare it to all the terrible states that are possible.
But it seems like just being OK is not enough.
And when we look at all our opportunities for escapism and entertainment and excitement, it seems like there’s somehow filling a need, a desire for something that feels wow.
We need some kind of that sense of wow.
We have to be taken out of our sense of knowing what’s coming next, and you know, just this kind of predictability and regularity.
As much as those are practically so useful, we always need more.
And I’m noticing this when it comes to escapism.
When I look at when do I feel this urge to escape? When do I feel the stronger pull towards escapist imagination, towards playing games, watching shows, imagining some kind of- anything to escape from my real life? It seems that when I accept and decide that just being mediocre is OK, that my life will be mediocre, that here’s a certain range of possibilities for my life, and “OK, that’s my life.
I will do this certain OK thing, my life will be OK, and it’ll be defined within this particular boundary, and whatever, it’ll be all right.
Maybe not amazing, maybe not wow, but OK.
My life will be OK.
And here it is, I accept that this is all I will have in my life.” As soon as I have that feeling, and that decision to be OK with being just OK, to accept that it’s OK to not have any wow and greatness and adventure and excitement, and maybe there’ll be some, but you know, within this sort of tame boundary of “This is what I can expect”: as soon as I go into that state of mind, that’s when the feeling of wanting to escape, of being attracted to escapist fantasy, that’s when it hits.
And I never made this connection as clearly before, but I can see now that I need to have a feeling that anything is possible in life.
Because we don’t know, of course, what’s gonna happen in our lives, but we can so easily get into a state where we just sort of expect that “OK my life is gonna be within these boundaries, and that’s what I have to look forward to, and that’s it.” But there’s something that’s being cut off when we do that.
We’re being cut off, we’re cutting ourselves off, from this feeling of adventure, feeling of being surprised and amazed, and the possibility that we could have a truly incredible life that’s beyond anything that we can imagine right now.
And if we give that up, if we accept that our life is not going to be amazing and incredible, but just OK, there’s a part of us that is unsatisfied.
Part of us that wants that incredible, amazing, transcendent feeling, that’s not OK with just being OK.
So what I’m finding now is that, in order to avoid that escapism and focus my energy on my real life, I have to be ready and imagine and be open to the possibility that my life could be incredible.
It could be amazing and great in ways that I can’t possibly even imagine or predict right now.
And if I can have that openness and that view towards my real life, then I won’t so much be drawn into escaping it, but I can instead put all that feeling of adventure and excitement and moving into the unknown: all that can be part of what our real lives become.
#incrediblelife #mediocrity #escapism