I’m totally jealous of you if you’re one of those people who can fall asleep like it’s no big deal. Alas, that is not me. But I’ve discovered that my best strategy for falling asleep is my Kindle, which lets me read with the lights off. This is the important part, though: it can’t be any old book, only very specific ones. I must enter a world I’ve been to before, where I know what happens next, and where all will be well in the end. Longbourn is a great one. But also the March family house, Avonlea, or Lake Mistawis.
It is, in essence, an escape. To fall asleep, I have to trick myself into believing that all is well in the world.
Because, actually, all is not well. I feel the weight of the Haitian families facing deportation, the fifty thousand souls crushed under rubble in Venezuela, the Ebola crisis in Congo. I share the burden of friends in Tanzania who are fighting poverty, government corruption, and profound betrayal. I wrestle with accepting that I am not enough for my children. I worry about their safety, their souls, their futures.
I’ve been thinking a lot about escape. It’s easier just to run away from the hard stuff, to pretend that none of it is true, than to sit with reality on my shoulders, a shadow twisting my insides, pressing on my mind.
Grace and I spent a day at Disneyland on a Wednesday in February, the first time either of us had been there in ten years. Other amusement parks may attract crowds for the thrills, but at Disneyland, it’s about the escape. Grown men wear costumes or Mickey ears or shirts that say, “I’m done being an adult today; I’m going to Disneyland!” Little girls (and some big ones) skip around in princess dresses and tiaras.
There are spotlessly clean walkways, employees’ ever-present smiles, giant turkey legs, jaunty music, and the smell of butter and cinnamon around every corner. The outside world is carefully blocked from view. You can pretend, for a day, that the world is perfect.
But for a lot of people, it’s not just one day. Ten years ago, a Wednesday in February would have meant a delightfully empty park. Not anymore. Those of you who don’t live in Southern California may not realize that Disneyland is no longer just a vacation destination; it’s a lifestyle. Many with season passes go multiple times a year–or multiple times a month. Ticket prices have increased far faster than inflation. It doesn’t seem to matter how high the prices go; people keep paying.
I wonder about what’s compelling so many to spend so much time, and a small fortune, in a pretend place. It can’t just be about creating family memories anymore. Could it also be about running away from a devastating world?
Last week, Grace and I fawned over the series The Other Bennet Sister, when for five hours we lived in a world of British accents, balls and white gloves, and where the awkward duckling finds purpose, beauty, and of course, a man. As soon as it ended, we considered starting it all over again (we didn’t, but now I’m on the waiting list to check out the book on my Kindle). We didn’t want to leave that world.
So is it wrong to escape?
I serve a God who designed a weekly day of rest. He also commanded his people to set aside time for weeks-long celebrations, where they left hard work behind to camp in makeshift shelters and feast under the stars. I serve a Savior who loved telling stories and who attended weddings.
And even though Christians are exhorted to pray for those who are suffering, I wonder if we were created to hold the weight of the world’s sorrow. I can’t look away from the videos of apartment buildings crushing sons and daughters or the stories of anguished refugees or those weeping over Ebola victims, but I realize that it’s only my generation that has had the ability to enter into the world’s tragedies in real time.
No wonder we are all so anxious. No wonder Disneyland and Netflix continue to raise their prices, why we are so easily sucked into algorithms that provide endless distraction. We all want to run away, and I think it’s okay to purposefully limit how much news we consume.
Yet what if the celebrations become our main focus? What if a momentary escape becomes a new reality? What if our main motivation for getting out of bed, working, and getting through the day is only to earn the money and time to retreat into a fantasy world?
And in a culture that idolizes entertainment, the doors to run into a pretend world are no further than our pockets. It might be shopping or gambling or porn or show-binging. And looming like an incoming storm is AI. We’ve all heard about people who “fell in love” with an imaginary persona. Not long ago, I read an article about AI programs that will allow a person to “chat” with a dead loved one. There’s another that lets you chat with “Jesus” himself. Is reality even important if what’s pretend makes us happy?
So is it wrong to escape?
At our deepest core of existence, I think every one of us is desperate for hope. For salvation. And when we can’t find it in the real world, we’ll clamber after it anywhere we can. I think this understanding is the first step to answering that question.
If this world is all there is, if earthquakes and epidemics and the economy have the last word in the story, then perhaps our only chance of avoiding abject despair is to find ways to trick ourselves into believing the world is a better place. We might as well spend every weekend at Disneyland or cultivate the perfect AI boyfriend, because why not?
But what if this world isn’t all there is? What if despair doesn’t get the last word? In that case, we don’t need to escape from reality, we need a better understanding of reality. God is sovereign and good. I am not God; I can’t understand it all, but I can trust him. Despair is part of the story, but so is beauty. Evil is real, but so is redemption.
C.S. Lewis argued that all our collective stories point to the One True Story. “Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’.”
So when we escape into fairy tales, they should remind us of the True Fairytale. They give us hope because they remind us that hope really does exist. They give us glimpses of salvation that point us to the real source of salvation. They give us the courage and the strength to enter back into the darkness and despair of the real world, and get back to the work God has called us to do–to bring real hope and real salvation to those around us.
That same week Grace and I went to Disneyland, I was receiving daily frantic texts from a friend in Tanzania. She was trying to leave her abusive husband (he was threatening her life) with her four kids. She lives in a city where job prospects are few for someone with a seventh-grade education, where there are zero government safety nets, and where she had also been abandoned by community support. I had a wonderful day with Grace, but I couldn’t stop thinking about my friend. Spending a day in the perfect pretend world of Disneyland while her plight weighed on me felt downright absurd.*
Yet, I think that’s exactly the point of tension Christians are supposed to sit in. Escape, in the right forms, gives us strength for the journey, helps focus our eyes on what’s to come, and reminds us why we hold on to hope. We are not meant to find heaven on earth. That perfect world we long for is still not yet, but it’s coming.
This is, ultimately, how I am learning to fall asleep. I choose books where I know what’s coming next and I know that all will be well in the end. But I shouldn’t need to trick myself into believing that all will be well someday. For I already know this to be true.
* I was able to help my friend get away from her husband. Then, after several weeks of prayer and exhausting all my contacts to find her a job, I discovered that another friend now offers micro-business training. He gave her personalized help and she is starting to support her family. Her life is still unfathomably hard, but at least they won’t starve.
Castle photos by Image by Ingo Jakubke and muenzi1958 from Pixabay.
