Escape Day

What the day is

Escape Day is observed on January 30. No origin is documented, and the instruction is simply to escape from something.

Origin and background

Escapism has a poor reputation and a more interesting research literature. Psychologists studying it generally separate two motivations that look identical from outside. One is expansion or self-expansion: seeking out an absorbing activity to gain something, whether stimulation, mastery or a change of state. The other is suppression: using the same activity to avoid thinking about something specific.

The distinction predicts the outcome fairly reliably. Escape undertaken to gain something tends to leave people restored and is associated with better wellbeing. Escape undertaken to not-think tends to leave the problem exactly where it was, while the time spent produces its own guilt, and it is associated with worse outcomes across studies of gaming, reading, television and travel alike. The activity is not the variable. The reason for reaching for it is.

This maps onto something better known: distraction works well for pain and short-term distress, and works badly as a long-term strategy for a problem that will still be there afterwards.

January is a reasonable time to think about it. The month is dark, long and post-festive, and the pull toward absorbing distraction is strong, which makes it a useful moment to notice which kind you are doing.

The genuinely restorative version has some consistent features. It absorbs attention fully, it has a definite end, and it does not require pretending anything. Reading, walking somewhere unfamiliar, and anything requiring both hands all qualify.

How to take part

• Escape into something absorbing, deliberately, and enjoy it without apology.
• Ask yourself first whether you are going toward something or away from something.
• Give it an end point, which is what separates rest from avoidance.
• Handle the avoided thing for fifteen minutes before escaping, which usually shrinks it.
• Choose something that uses your hands, which absorbs attention more completely than a screen.