You're Fooling Yourself.

We often spend such an amazing amount of time with escapism.

We read tremendous amounts of fiction.
Stories.

Harry Potter.
Lord of the Rings.
Hunger Games.
50 Shades.

We read these to escape from our reality.

Then, we fire up our PlayStations. Our Xboxes. Nintendos. PCs.

Escape and augment our reality.

We watch endless TV. Movies. Rerun after rerun after rerun of The Office and Friends.

Escape and augment our reality.

We indulge in thousands of hours of music blaring through our consciousness. At the gym. Washing dishes. Reading. In the car. At work. Playing with our kids. 

Escape and augment our reality.

We smoke pot. Take blotters of acid. Imbibe copious amounts of alcohol. Smoke cigarettes. 

Escape and augment our reality.

Escape.
Escape.
Escape.

Just think of how many hours we spend that build into months and then into years of our lives, spent escaping our realities.

Do we even know our lives anymore?
Do we even grasp our realities when we spend 4, 6, 8+ hours each day in escapism?

How can we insist at the tops of our lungs that “I am alive!” when so clearly we can’t stand being alive, fighting with every fiber of us to claw away from reality.

We are liars. 
We are thieves.

We are lying to ourselves about living.
We are stealing from ourselves and our loved ones the value of our time.

Instead, we must seek to remove the scales from our eyes.

Get to the gym.
Go outside and enjoy the stars.
Try getting up before the sun.
Read more improvement, history, and betterment books.
Listen to music just to listen to it — nothing else.
Enjoy the recording of ideas, knowledge, and discussion of others.

Life is so damned short and you’re gouging out your eyes, slicing off your ears, ripping your tongue out at the roots, and removing your fingertips, straining to avoid the responsibility of being conscious. 

Face your existence.
Face life.

Why are you running? From what are you escaping?

Follow for daily philosophical meditations.

These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”