Reflections #008: Coming home different
You're allowed to disappear
Let me start with a confession. I wrote this while listening to Everything in Its Right Place by Radiohead. On repeat. I often write like that, with one song spinning endlessly in the background until it becomes part of the rhythm of the page. For some reason, I can’t write without music. Not just as ambiance, but as tension. It calibrates the tone and syncs the tempo. To me, the written word is incomplete without a score. I don’t just write essays, I try to build soundtracks for the life I’m trying to make sense of.
The irony of the song’s title doesn’t escape me. Especially now. Everything in Its Right Place: the mantra of someone trying to hold it together while quietly falling apart. A line like that doesn’t just belong in a song; it belongs in the bloodstream of anyone trying to navigate modern life without drowning in it.
I used to think it was my song. That very song, once an anchor for my own private reverie, is now chopped and looped into oblivion on TikTok. Used to sell wanderlust, to soundtrack choreographed solitude. Captioned with empty longing by people who’ve never sat with its weight. I don’t fault them. I’m actually glad they’re listening. But that song wasn’t made to sell wellness aesthetics. It wasn’t background music for shallow content. It was built for people crawling through the static of their own thoughts, looking for meaning.
I was fourteen when I found it. A teacher noticed I wasn’t listening to what everyone else was. She went out of her way to hand me a stack of CDs. Joy Division, The Smiths, Nine Inch Nails, Dinosaur Jr., and, of course, Radiohead. That became my fuel. I’d sit on the bus after school, earbuds in, drowning in Thom Yorke’s riddles and have Ian Curtis draw maps of heartbreak while everyone else talked. That was my escape hatch. I wasn’t trying to be different. I was just trying to find a place where I could think. Where the world didn’t feel so narrow.
That’s what this is about. The places we go to get out. The high we chase when the world feels too flat. This is a reflection on escapism; not as avoidance, but as fuel. The kind of escapism that creates artists, visionaries, and wanderers. The kind that gives you a new frame of reference. If you’ve ever felt like you were born with a compass that doesn’t point to the places everyone else is going, I wrote this for you.
Escapism is fuel
Escapism isn’t the enemy. It’s oxygen. It’s the deep breath you take when the world feels too structured, too small, too damn predictable. In a culture obsessed with rooting and settling down, I’m telling you that floating off, when done with intention, isn’t weakness. It’s strength. It’s clarity. It’s what allows certain people to stay alive in a world that punishes depth and rewards numbness.
This isn’t about running away from responsibility. It’s about choosing the life that actually belongs to you. The truth is, you’re supposed to go a little mad in your life. You’re supposed to walk into the fog. Touch the walls of your own hell and see what’s on the other side. Some do this physically, some mentally, some through their art, others through the choices no one around them understands. And no, I’m not talking about self-destruction. I’m talking about the opposite. Creation. Construction. The kind that looks like chaos from the outside. The kind that forces you to burn through who you used to be before you can live as who you are.
"We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." - Charles Bukowski
You should be intoxicated by the unusual. Exhilarated by ideas that don’t belong in slide decks or group chats. Escapism, when wielded right, doesn’t make you disappear. It sharpens you. It gives you taste. It gives you contrast. It turns the world vivid. I escape all the time. In conversations. In cafés. Mid-flight. Mid-sentence. I disappear into thought when someone bores me. But the moment someone says something sharp, something unscripted, I’m fully there. Activated. Lit up.
You don’t owe anyone an explanation. Not for what you want. Not for what you’re chasing. Not for the quiet choices that make no sense to the people sitting on the sidelines. Because that’s what dreamers do, they escape, so they can return with something worth saying.
Identity formation
Escapism is the beginning of taste. And taste is the beginning of identity. It is the rebellion against the default setting. Because when you let yourself be drawn toward what captivates you, without apology or need for justification, you begin to assemble a life that feels unmistakably your own. And most people never get that far. They outsource their preferences before they ever explore them. They build themselves according to templates. What’s in fashion, what’s acceptable, what will earn nods of approval at the dinner table. But those lives never feel lived. They feel templated and hollow. Like something borrowed.
If you want to create a life that isn’t a carbon copy of someone else’s, you need to start noticing what moves you. Even if it’s obscure. Even if it’s strange. Even if no one else around you understands it. Especially then. Because the first thing that makes you feel something deeply is art, film, books, places, and ideas; that’s not just entertainment. That’s guidance. That’s orientation. That’s your mind tapping into something primal and telling you to pay attention.
The world doesn’t need more polite copies. It needs people who are completely, unapologetically themselves. People with sharp edges and strange tastes. People who took the time to wander, escape, and dive headfirst into what fascinated them without asking for permission. Because only then can you form real taste. And from taste, comes voice. And from voice, comes identity.
"The only people for me are the mad ones..." - Jack Kerouac
Becoming yourself, truly, deeply, is not some Instagram slogan. It is a violent, beautiful, necessary act. It might be the most important thing you do in this life. Because once you become yourself, you’re no longer at the mercy of the world. You’re no longer auditioning. You’re living.
And you will never get there by only doing what’s expected. You get there by following the thread of what makes you feel awake. What gives you goosebumps. What keeps you up at night thinking. You get there by chasing that feeling like your life depends on it, because in a way, it does.
Courage to leave, maturity to own it
If you feel called to live freely, then by all means, go. Travel far, build things with your own hands, change cities, change careers, take risks most wouldn’t even consider. Just don’t mistake freedom for selfishness. Take responsibility for the roles you’ve chosen. For the people who trust you, rely on you. Responsibility isn’t a cage. It’s proof that your fire has purpose. If you find that your presence is more destructive than constructive in someone’s life, be honest. Don’t make them pay for your restlessness. Sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away, not out of malice, but because you know you’re not what they need.
From a psychological perspective, this is about congruence. The closer the distance between who you are internally and how you act externally, the more stable and self-directed your life becomes. But when you’re forcing yourself into relationships or routines that don’t align with who you are, because of guilt, obligation, or fear of being misunderstood, dissonance builds. That dissonance leaks into your behavior. It turns into resentment, volatility, numbness. And often, the people around you absorb that tension. In that sense, knowing when you’re no longer good for someone is not just an act of emotional maturity. It’s a refusal to cause collateral damage while you're busy denying your own truth.
There are other places. Other people. Entire circles where your intensity isn’t overwhelming but essential. Strong minds. Restless hearts. People who don’t flinch when you speak your mind or chase something wild. If you’re wired for more, don’t ignore it. Let it take you across countries, into new experiences, toward harder questions. See as much as you can, build your own reference points, live so fully that even regret respects you. Just be sure it’s done with clarity. With ownership. Because the only real betrayal is shrinking yourself to fit where you no longer belong.
When masks start to crack
You can only pretend to be someone else for so long before it eats at you. Most people don’t even know they’re wearing a mask, they just call it being responsible. They’ve layered themselves into roles: the reliable boyfriend or girlfriend, the committed employee, the son or daughter who never disappoints. And somewhere along the way, they stopped asking whether those roles reflect who they actually are.
The problem isn’t the structure; it’s the denial. When you repress the darker parts of yourself, the ambition, the chaos, the need for freedom, they don’t disappear. They grow teeth. Jung called this the shadow. If you ignore it, it finds other ways to surface: bitterness, passive aggression, a low-grade misery that lingers no matter how well your life looks from the outside.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions." - Oscar Wilde
The thing is, no one gets away with lying to themselves forever. That’s where role strain kicks in. The more your inner world and your outer life pull in different directions, the more you fray. Your body knows before your mind does: fatigue that won’t lift, irritation that creeps into every conversation, the sudden impulse to disappear. At some point, the mask cracks. And if you’re not careful, you’ll explode it all instead of recalibrating. The hard truth is that you have to confront what parts of your life are costumes and which ones are real skin. You don’t have to burn everything down. But you do have to take a hard look at what’s worth keeping. And who you’d be if you stopped performing.
Return with a contribution
Escape isn’t the enemy of responsibility. Done right, it is the preparation for it. You don’t run just to run. You run so that you can return with something worth offering. A perspective, a skill, a story. You go out into the chaos not to abandon the world, but to better understand how to move within it. That’s the difference between escapism as indulgence and escapism as evolution.
Because if you go far enough into what moves you, into music, into literature, into cities where no one knows your name, you come back different. Sharper. Hungrier. Calmer, even. You start to see things clearly. You’ve stretched your frame of reference. And the people who never left? They feel that. It resonates. But only if you come back. Only if you take that new shape you’ve become and give it form. Through your work, your conversations, your presence.
The point of escape is not to disappear. It’s to return as someone who knows. So go. Go deeply into your fascinations. Get lost in them. Let them intoxicate you. Let them reshape your mind. But come back with something real. Something that holds weight. Something that only you could’ve brought back from where you went. That’s the contract between freedom and responsibility.
And I believe that’s how you earn your place in the world.