Photograph by Tat Jones
So many people assume that others travel to ‘escape reality’, and recently I have been questioning this concept.
Exactly what is reality? The expectation that once you leave school, you will (if you’re lucky), find a job you like or at least pays the bills, buy a house, settle down and have a few kids? Maybe a gap year if you’re lucky.
Have I left reality behind because I have chosen not to take this path that is defined by my culture?
What is the opposite of reality? Imagination? Has stepping out of my cultural norm thrown me into a world that isn’t real – an imaginary world? Or is it not reality because of the notion that it cannot last forever, that it must come to an end sooner or later and then I will have to rejoin ‘reality’ a few years behind everyone else – and therefore be deliberately disadvantaging myself? In what time frame does the backpacker life become real? The moment you miss your plane home? The decision to invest your time and money into a business? When you find yourself building a nest for yourself on a tropical island and forgetting what chocolate tastes like?
Let’s look at the situation in the UK right now. University fees through the roof, surplus graduates working minimum wage jobs, the first rung on the housing ladder incurs crippling lifetime debt and a year on year increase in those living below or on the poverty line. People blaming immigration for their problems instead of embracing the cultural exchange that comes with it. Am I a coward for not weathering the storm of my birthplace or ingenious for chasing my dreams and creating the life for myself that I want to lead?
There is the cultural expectation to fulfil our role in society, pay our taxes to keep the machine oiled and moving so that future generations have the greater chance to make the decision to pay their taxes and oil the machine. To contribute towards society. But what if that society is a claustrophobic mess? Doesn’t it make sense to broaden your horizons and see what the world is really about?
So are you still really thinking that I have escaped reality? Or are you just unhappy with the reality that, due to fear or circumstance, you find yourself trapped in? You have your reality and I have mine. Reality is the life you are living right now, and if it’s not for you then it’s only you who can change the environment you live in. The world is a big place, filled with many simultaneous realities, and in just some of them you will find yourself at an advantage. Why not challenge yourself with something new, immerse yourself in the Swahili language and culture or live in the jungle. Whatever your reality is, embrace it when you find it!
By Tat Jones
Wonderful. Just a word: if you are not claustrophobic in yourself, you are the reality, world is only an object
Ingenious!
Reality is what we make it… you are doing quite well, and getting more from your ‘reality’ than most that are caught up in the reality of the rat race of meeting societal expectations that you describe.
I mean, why be content to live a life of quiet desperation, just because you’re an englishman (or woman) and it’s what they do? I say let loose that upper lip, and laugh and love and live.
it is so sad what is happening all over the world. i wish school kids would be taught the realities of today, because getting to go to a get a way, such as your photo, is not in the cards today, unless you are real lucky. kids need to be taught that life is good, life is what you make it, but life is rough, and making ends meet is difficult. we no longer live in a fairy land of magic
Reality is for each of us to create…I like your take on it!
Of course you have not “escaped” reality but you are not trapped in whatever your “reality” may be. As long as we enjoy what we are doing we love our reality. It is only when we find ourselves trapped do we turn around and blame that “reality” to be a reality that traps us, which of course is all wrong. It’s the blaming game that makes people see things in a bad light.
Woo Hoo! Are we ever on the same page! Cheers.
This piece makes me smile! I completely agree..
Yeah, great post! Ironic and sad. I would like to add something: you are born somewhere, that’s your house. You choose to live somewhere else. That could be your home. But you see, it’s not very common that you get a nice reaction when you go to somebody else’s home and say: “I want to build a house here next to yours”. People are not interested in “embracing the cultural exchange”(utopia) because: a) most people are not really that much into culture unless it needs it(when they lack dentists, doctors, engineers etc. that can work at their advantage), b) they perceive the exchange one dimensional( the richer country enriches the other culture, not the other way around), c) foreigners are “good” exclusively when needed.
Wonderful post!
..It’s interesting that you should say “university fees are through the roof” – I am an American and over here, we envy the European universities’ relatively low costs of attendance (my university was around $35,000 annually…thank goodness for a scholarship! I do still have a good chunk in loans to pay back however).
I think a vacation is an escape from reality because the assumption is that the reality is a different lifestyle. If a backpacker makes it his/her job to explore the world via travelling, this is no longer a vacation but work, and thus his/her reality as I see it. For the office worker who hasn’t left his/her neighborhood, city, or country, the complete difference of scenery, culture, and language certainly calls to attention a different and temporary “reality” for the traveller, and I find it’s logical to call this temporary reality and step from one’s own reality of the life he/she lives in his/her culture daily.