The Problem with Creating a Life You Don’t Need to Escape From
Everything we make permanent enters reality. And reality always has a price.
The promise is simple.
If you put the pieces together the right way, if you change the scenery, find the right profession and the perfect partner, the restlessness inside you will finally quiet down.
The idea that somewhere there exists a perfect combination of circumstances where all the scattered parts of us will finally fall into place. That if we choose carefully enough, we will finally arrive at a life we won’t feel the need to escape from.
But what if the problem is not that we haven’t found the right life yet?
Maybe the problem is the idea itself.
The idea that we can turn life into something no life was ever meant to be.
A rescue.
In the first stage of our dissatisfaction, longing is our only oxygen.
Imagine a woman sitting in an office under buzzing fluorescent lights, entering meaningless data into endless spreadsheets. The job pays the bills, but in return it asks for small pieces of her soul.
But hidden behind those meaningless spreadsheets, another life is unfolding.
While she types mechanically, she writes a book in her head.
That book is more than a book. It is her secret place. A space where a version of herself exists that is not defined by what she has to do, what is expected of her, or what she needs to prove.
There is no pressure to sell herself. No fear of criticism. No deadlines.
She does not write because she wants to become someone. She writes because there, she can still be herself.
And that is exactly why this space is so precious. Not because the book is the solution. But because it gives her the feeling that there is still a part of her that has not been occupied.
Her other mental refuges work the same way.
As she moves through the exhausting, perfectly rehearsed choreography of everyday life with a partner who knows her so well that, in a way, he can no longer truly see her, she imagines a conversation that recently, completely by accident, awakened a part of herself she had forgotten existed.
She imagines herself reflected in his eyes. A version of herself that has not yet been explained, predicted, and stored in someone else’s memory. The feeling that she can still be discovered.
And above the screen of her exhaustion, the same image keeps appearing: a small seaside town where she escapes for only one week every summer. That one week keeps the other fifty-one alive.
The magic of that place is the promise that somewhere there exists a space where she is different.
At this stage, her unhappiness is actually simple. It has a direction. She knows exactly what she is missing.
And then, somehow, the stars align.
She gets everything. The scenery changes completely.
She moves to that small seaside town.
Beside her wakes a new partner. The stranger who once looked at her with fresh eyes. The one who saw parts of her that even she had forgotten.
Her new job — the one that now pays the bills — is writing. The spreadsheets are in the past. Her imagination is now her currency.
The ideal has been reached. She has created a life she no longer needs to escape from.
And she does not realize that this is exactly the moment when she begins losing everything.
Because while we desire something, it can still be a refuge. While it is far away, it can contain everything we are missing.
But the moment we get it, we ask more of it. We do not only ask it to make us happy. We ask it to save us.
But time is merciless. Not because it takes good things away from us, but because it turns them into reality. And reality is where everything loses a part of its magic.
Humans adapt to everything. Even to what once looked like paradise.
Slowly, quietly, almost unnoticed, the new companions become old routines.
The new partner, the one who once looked at her with discovery in his eyes, begins to know her too well. The conversations that once awakened hidden corners of herself now become part of a new choreography. Different, yet somehow familiar. Love has not disappeared. It has simply stopped being unknown. And the unknown is where we most easily project salvation.
The seaside town loses its mystique under the invasion of loud summer tourists. When they leave, a long winter arrives, where the wind relentlessly strikes the shutters and finds its way into bones and thoughts. The place has not become worse. It has simply stopped being a symbol. Geography did not heal her inner restlessness. It only gave it a backdrop with prettier sunsets.
The greatest tragedy, however, happens where she least expects it. In writing.
The moment the book becomes a way to pay the bills, it stops being the same place that once saved her. She can no longer write only because she wants to, in the way and at the time she chooses. Now there are editors, expectations, a market, deadlines. Now she has to produce what once came from freedom.
And the circle closes in the most ironic way possible.
She reached the job she loves. And discovered that it takes something from her too. Only now she is selling exactly those pieces of her soul that she once protected only for herself.
Everything that becomes a permanent part of our lives enters reality. And reality always has a price.
Maybe that is why no escape can ever last. Because we try to turn the things that give us life into things that will keep us alive forever.
We ask love to remain a beginning forever. We ask places to remain a refuge forever. We ask creativity to remain freedom forever.
But nothing alive can serve that purpose.
Everything alive changes. Everything close to us becomes familiar. Everything we love becomes real.
And maybe that is why the problem with creating a life we do not need to escape from is not that such a life cannot be found. Maybe the problem is that we expect what we find to forever protect us from the simple fact of being alive.
In the end, as she sits in that house by the sea, listening to the wind and staring at the empty Word document she has to fill by tomorrow morning in order to pay the bills, her eyes will drift toward the window again. Her partner will be making coffee in the next room. Just as predictable in his movements as the one before him.
She will close her eyes with a deep sigh and begin to imagine. Maybe a distant, crowded city. The anonymity of millions of people. A boring office where she could simply work her eight hours and return, once again, to the secret space inside her mind where she writes something only for herself.
Or maybe she will finally understand what she has been trying to avoid all along.
She was not missing a perfect life. She was missing a space where she could find herself again.
Maybe a person does not need a life they will never want to escape from. Maybe they only need a window.
Not so they can leave. But so they can remember that something exists beyond the walls.