I was thinking about the Hastings man who appeared to be living a couple of lives simultaneously until it became too much. No one knows all the details, but it appears he attempted to rid himself of the one he didn’t like by making out as though he had been killed. Whether this was what he intended or not remains something of a mystery.
It’s easy to blame such actions on drugs or extreme circumstances because these are not the actions of a normal person. And to a degree that’s true.
Yesterday my wife took a few kids to see Ratatouille, the story of a Rat who imagined being a great French Chef despite his rodent state in the sewers of Paris. How will his fantasy exist harmoniously with his reality? Easy! He’ll live his dream through someone else.
From all accounts it’s very funny. But as with most stories there runs a thread of truth based on human experience.
The fact of the matter is, fate, circumstance or stupidity can leave any of us with the awful feeling that we would rather be somewhere or someone else. This is no minority experience. For most people at some stage during their lives, fantasy can take a frightening grip.
René Descartes kicked the question of our reality into existence with the question, "Do I exist?" To which he answered “yes” (cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am). A conclusion he came to after hiding in a kitchen cupboard for some period of time. But what kind of existence do we want? Can we ever know another point of view in the way we currently know our own?
In part, the reason we wish to live another existence is due to unhappiness with the present one. People travel the world to escape their lives, or to simply take a holiday from the one they can’t escape from forever.
On the other hand, many of us just dream and take no action at all, but we can be trapped just the same. Becoming someone we are not and remaining someone we do not want to be are bars of the same prison.
It might sound like trite religious sentiment, but I genuinely believe that following Christ changes people’s lives. Not in the sense that they are running away, as above, but that they discover more deeply who God has made them to be. Yes, lives do change; not on the foundation of a fantasy but rather as a movement of God’s Spirit. Often when people choose to follow Christ even they are surprised at what happens to them. Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching… you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
The freedom that Jesus spoke of was not an escape from present reality. On the contrary, he meant the freedom to exist in all circumstance as a person who can never be contained because the God who created and loves us dictates the terms of our life.
© Digby Wilkinson 2007