The Present is Such a Drag, huh?

         The Dalai Lama said that inner-peace is essential to happiness. A common lack of inner-peace among our people is exhibited by the prominence of escapist idealism in pop-culture.

         Life is pretty good, right? Or perhaps not. Although people are sustained by their goals and ambitions and have a fairly adequate amount of control over their lives, many people still seek some kind of a sensual salvation away from the mundaneity, complacency or stimulationless mode of their daily lives. People can choose for themselves what they do with their life, but most people are holding themselves back away from something; and that something is what provides us with a common held notion of a new yearned freedom.
         This is the concept I call seeking the “life well-lived.” I understand this concept first hand as I feel it deeply in my soul and have written it into songs of my own such as “I’ll Drive You There,” where I suggest to a friend that we go out and find fun, “leav[ing] the things we’ve left” to “live under the stars,” (Doug Donoughe, I’ll Drive You There).
It is the point behind a spur of the moment road-trip. It is the meaning at the center of dreams; being swept off of your feet by a newfound ultimate love, going to the big city to hit it big, living Jack Kerouac’s life on the road. Even people who are generally satisfied with life have notions and secret hopes about having things work out instantly and dramatically in their favor. In an episode of the seminal sitcom Scrubs, a drifter comes into town who captures the imagination of the show’s characters. Instead of living a daily life, the drifter is completely filled with the inner-peace that the Dalai Lama wrote about. He holds ill-will towards no-one because he lives a completely content life: moving off to wherever he wants to go and doing whatever he thinks is righteous. He inspires some of the characters to blow off work and go out drinking in an attempt to capture some of the hedonistic self-assurance and inner-peace of the drifter. This idea is mirrored in the recent horror film The Gravedancers, where a group of day-to-day businessmen are convinced to go out partying in a graveyard after one of their friends died and they were faced with the mortality of life. When people are faced with life’s ultimate end, they think to themselves “Well gee, I need to do what I want to do, I need to have fun, I don’t really like to live this kind of a daily life.”  Undeniably there is a strong presence of this desire in our society.
         Tom Petty sings of this heartfully held human desire in the song A Higher Place. He sings “We’ve gotta get to a higher place and we’ve gotta leave by night.” The “higher place” he speaks of is the notion of a higher ground that people hold for a better existence away from their normal life that could happen to them immediately (i.e. through an overnight escape). It’s the special success, the fulfillment of a dream: running away with your true love or giving up what you have to follow your dreams. It presents a solid notion of escapism. In the song, they have to “leave by night,” suggesting that they have to get out right away and leave what they have behind. What they’re leaving behind may not be worth anything to them because people desire excitement and fulfillment beyond the traditional. They need to get there to “find somebody who can help somebody” else they might not “be nobody no more,” (Tom Petty, A Higher Place). In other words, you might lose yourself in the grind unless you escape from tradition and follow your dreams. That’s what the song suggests. But it is not a cautionary tale or anything of that sort. It is a first-person autobiographical exclamation where Tom is in need of being saved from the same and the sane.
A Higher Place isn’t the only song about escapist fantasies or the need for sensual salvation. In fact, it’s not even the only song about it on Tom Petty’s 1994 album Wildflowers (where A Higher Place comes from). Wildflowers is an album about living for today and finding inner-peace, and most of the songs express the themes discussed in this essay. The song Cabin Down Below paints a familiar picture of a couple taking to the road in order to buck responsibility and enjoy the simplest joy of life (excitement). You Wreck Me portrays a similar situation where salvation is likewise found through the wonder of having a beautiful companion. Discontent with the here and now is likewise expressed in the title-track Wildflowers where Tom sings that his friend belongs somewhere perfect and wonderful, while implying the lack-thereof in reality.
And Tom Petty is far from the only artist who sings songs of escapism. These themes are prominent in the works of passionate songwriters. Bruce Springsteen is an artist who causes listeners to fantasize and wish towards a better place or a higher ground like Tom. In two of his most famous songs, Born To Run and Badlands, Bruce describes the here-and-now as a wasteland of emotional drains and declares that we’ve gotta get out of the present and into the salvation of the future. These classic & beloved songs couldn’t possibly be more blatantly expressive of society’s general wistfulness towards escape and its apparent disdain for reality is it is right now. Born To Run masterfully reiterates the often longed for dream of getting the heck out of wherever you are and going to find a higher ground. Badlands epitomizes many of the ideas already detailed in this essay. Like the people inspired to ditch work in Scrubs and the desperate hopefuls in A Higher Place, Badlands explains a profound lack of appreciation for the situations that makes up our daily life, as well as a need to get to something better. “I dont give a damn for the same old played out scenes … I want the heart, I want the soul, I want control right now,” (Bruce Springsteen, Badlands). Bruce’s soulful songwriting expresses again what is evidently a consistent heatfelt opinion in our culture: living a normal day-to-day life is living a life where you don’t have control over what you do and you can’t follow your true desires. Digging even deeper into the human condition, Bruce sings “poor men wanna be rich, rich men wanna be kings, and a king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything,” (Bruce Springsteen, Badlands). This is the lack of inner-peace that The Dalai Lama said is the cause for otherwise fortunate people to be unhappy. Bruce just wants “to find one face that ain’t looking through me,” “just one place” where he can be free. They’re heartfelt but they aren’t unique feelings. It’s abundantly clear that these desires are held by many many people in today’s society.
         What is the cause of this rampant dissatisfaction with getting up every morning and working at the same job? Is it a lack of faith in society’s brainwashing of our ways? What causes so many people to feel that they have no control over their own lives despite supposed free-will? Why must some scream and yearn for a drunken party night when they meet someone who is unhithered by the daily grind? It could be a problem with society’s methods. It could be proof of an overall degradation in today’s youth. Or perhaps it is, as Bruce implied, nothing more than the curse of humanity’s emotions to constantly want more, more, and more. Whatever it is that causes this painfully obvious unappreciation and sorrow, The Dalai Lama suggests that finding inner-peace is the way to defeat it. Inner-peace can be found through path and comprehension, according to the Dalai Lama. Essential to this path is love and compassion for all people.