"She lives in a fairy tale/
Somewhere too far for us to find./
Forgotten the taste and smell/
Of a world that she's left behind."
Brick by Boring Brick, Paramore, 2009
All humans have a natural inclination to feel happy and take many measures to ensure that they are. In the world today which is fraught with so many troubles, escapism is one of the most common ways of ensuring that we are happy. Escapism is defined as an inclination to retreat from unpleasant realities through diversion or fantasy. In the lesson about how different people react to obstacles in life (the one about the egg, carrot and coffee bean going into hot water), this character trait is attributed to the egg. The egg’s white, when placed in hot water, hardens to protect the yolk just like how some people harden up and isolate themselves from the world when they face adversity in life. People numb the pain. It is convenient and quick and does not require much effort and at the end of the day, they feel happy. But unfortunately, not many people have had the courage or the desire to question whether the pain was truly gone.
The difference between eliminating the pain and numbing it is that in the former, the pain is truly gone while in the latter, the pain is still present, just that our senses are unable to detect it because we deliberately make them as such. The former method acknowledges the problem while the latter simply hides it. In psychology, this is known as psychological compensation. The human mind employs a complicated system of checks and balances to ensure that the amount of sadness is always smaller or at least equal to the amount of happiness. If there is a deficit in happiness or a surplus in sadness, the human mind is quick to compensate for this by taking measures to ensure that we get our dose of happiness. In this case, a person compensates for the sadness caused by the pain by partaking in events which entail happiness.
Relating this back to my life, I think that when I encounter difficulties, the standard operating procedure for me is to construct a world where all of these problems do not exist. I construct fantasy worlds, an elaborate system of lies designed to make myself feel better and perhaps I may have lost my touch with reality. When a lie is repeatedly told with enough conviction, a person will eventually believe it. What’s more is that when the person has an incentive to believe in that lie, he will believe in it. We take many pains to ensure that the world we live in is as realistic as possible. The song Brick by Boring Brick by Paramore says “Well make sure to build your hose brick by boring brick/ or the wolf’s gonna blow it down.” When doing this reflection, what really struck me was how much pain and effort I took in constructing this system of lies when I could have used the same amount of pain and effort to change the real world I live in. Why waste so much effort on something fake when you could have used the same effort spending it on something real, genuine, authentic?
What I really learned from this reflective exercise, and what really struck me, was that I was becoming something I knew that I should not have become. I was tricked and distracted by the seemingly great rewards that, impulsively, I took it without taking a closer look at the consequences. When the egg is placed in hot water, the white hardens up to ensure that the yolk is protected. But what many people seem to forget is that in the process, the yolk also hardens and we become cold, emotionless, unfeeling pieces of movable clockwork; machines unable to feel genuinely happy. And indeed, because I have adopted this method time and time again, I have also begun to harden. But fortunately, there is still hope. I think that most people feel that this placing in hot water (or boiling) is a one time event. That after it, you have chosen what you wanted to be and you are commited to it. But that is false. The boiling does not take place at a specific time of your life. The boiling spans throughout it. And I am still young and there is a lot of time to change.
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Long post, eh? Well, thanks for reading if you actually managed to endure all that D: and remind me to do an analytic/critical assessment of Brick by Boring Brick San's donut poem XD
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