How one simple phrase changed my life

“Ah. Finally. I’m in paradise!” — me when I arrive somewhere beautiful. You too?

There’s this loop that I’ve become all too familiar with, and maybe you know this loop well, too.

This is the loop where a need to escape from reality starts to bubble and boil over. So here’s a quick Google search of the top 5 places to visit during (insert month), and away Google works to find the best deals to hit up the next hot spot—an escape to my version of paradise this time.

Here’s the irony: I’ve been seeking an escape from the reality that I have personally built for myself. I had been seeking to escape my life to fill my cup so that I would be fulfilled to come back again to the reality that I so desperately needed to escape to have my cup slowly drain (from my evidently energetically leaky life) just to loop back into my escapism loop however many months later. Is this not the definition of insanity?

And don’t get me wrong, I’m all for time off for rest and travel, but not as a form of escapism, which is exactly what I was using it for. I was always running and grasping so desperately after paradise, only to hold it for a few short days and back into the loop again.

Bringing paradise to your present

In February 2024, I heard Preston Smiles refer to bringing paradise to the present. This truth slapped me in the face rather abruptly.