(1.)
The pursuit we owe to ourselves and the world.
Everyone is a prisoner of something. Current physical circumstances. Past trauma. A limit of belief or imagination. An insecurity. A lie we believe. A truth we ignore. A fear of failure. A voice in our heads that dictates what we can and cannot do. Expectations of family or society. Disability. Chronic Illness. Addiction. Grief. Shame. A general world weariness or exhaustion. A locked idea that the world we've known is the only world there is, or ever could be.
We praise
the P.O.W. who escapes an enemy/internment camp. We praise the addict who escapes their addiction and chooses
sobriety. But in so many other contexts escape is considered juvenile, a product of weakness or
immaturity. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
(2.) To imagine something better for yourself or the world in a fictional setting, until you have the courage or ability to make it real.
No P.O.W. escapes an internment camp without imagining a vision of freedom powerful enough it spits in the face of their current tortured and
starved reality. Equally so, an addict who
imagines a reality in which they are sober, is often imagining something they think is impossible.
Escape gives us permission to think limitlessly, even when we think everything in our life limits us. Because it doesn't ask what's likely or possible, or what the
odds are. It just asks, "What would
your reality look like if you had it your Way?"