Thoughts are wild, and one can bet even saints have some intrusive thoughts, but the irony here is that they don’t act on most of them like ordinary people.
What if one day you’re sitting at your desk or on your couch, maybe even in a meeting, and you’re convinced it could have been an email—and your mind drifts? It starts as a soft hum, like a whisper in the back of your brain, then quickly escalates into a full-blown fantasy: “What if I just… left?”
The thing about dreams of escape is that they have nothing necessarily to do with a plane ticket to some exotic locale. It might just be the promise of running away from that endless stream of emails or from grocery lists that seem like they’re never getting any shorter.
Sometimes, it’s about escaping from ourselves—the self-doubt, the to-do lists, the pressures of “being responsible.” If you’re honest, you have probably thought about just walking away from it all, even though only for a moment.
Take a minute to think about it: “What if you just disappeared for a day?” Maybe you could grab a seat in the corner of a coffee shop and make some progress on that novel you’ve been wanting to get into, or take a walk through a park and see whatever the world has in store, obligation-free. Free-souled, unencumbered, in the space between what you have to do and what you “want” to do.
Let’s add a twist here because that’s always part of the show: the dream of flight is never just about running away; it’s about reclaiming something we feel we’ve lost—the freedom to be spontaneous, to choose glee over obligation, to reset priorities without judgment.
This is why, quite often, escapism isn’t such a bad thing. Sometimes, we need that fresh air to return to ourselves stronger.
So, the next time you feel like running, instead of making grand escape plans, breathe in and think this way: “How can I create my own moments of freedom right here, right now?”
Because sometimes, the best escape is a shift in perspective!
