Escapism
The hands pushing denotes that I want to get out of my miseries
Generally there is a negative connotation to the word escapism, but it is not so, if used constructively. Escapism is defined as habitually trying to seek distraction and escape unpleasant realities especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy. Escapism is the avoidance of unpleasant, boring, arduous, scary, or banal aspects of daily life. It can also be used as a term to define the actions people take to help relieve persistent feelings of depression or general sadness. (Source).
In the pursuit of happiness we try to escape from emotions that are hard to digest in this material world. These material afflictions cause us to seek an escape which temporarily gives us relief. Emotions that deal with pain, disease, a loss of something or someone, a thrashed false ego and many many more such emotions are some of the reasons why we want to escape the reality of this false world. The harsh reality is that this material world is full of these miseries and escapism has to be used constructively.
When escapism becomes habitual it can present as an addiction and thus is not constructive. Some people get addicted to social media, to food, drugs, alcohol, gossiping, gambling, shopping etc. All these things are ways in which the mind runs away from the problems that it is facing (escaping). Once we are stuck in the addiction, desires are created which then further bring frustration and misery. For example, we see on social media someone posing very happy pictures in some far far away land. Maybe we get frustrated as we are having a bad day, and desire to go to that beautiful place thinking we will become happy there; this may create envy within our heart as well. All these are very subtle changes within our subconscious mind. All the images, slogans and posts we see are creating unnecessary desires. These desires are one of the reasons we are so miserable. There are 8,400,000 species and 8,400,000 desires. Every desire creates a material body. As even a single desire causes us to come back into this material world and take on a body in any one of these species. Today we may go through our social media feed to escape but instead we are creating many such desires.
A more constructive way to escape would be to engage the mind and senses in service to Krishna somehow. There will be times when we want to escape from the harshness of this material world, but we can take shelter of Krishna in those moments. Understand that we are like fish out of water here. Our real home is the home where Krishna lives. We don’t belong here. In those moments we can take shelter of the holy names in the form of japa (chanting on beads) or kirtan (singing the holy names with instruments). We can escape to silently just sitting with closed eyes and meditating on the form of Krishna and our eternal service to Him. We can also read scriptures. Hearing about the Lord in the form of katha (pastimes) is also a very constructive way to escape. These forms of escape create desires to be with the Lord. They also develop our relationship with the Lord.
Escaping to mundane addictions will allow you to temporarily turn off the mind from experiencing the three fold miseries of material life. But better yet, escaping and taking shelter of Lord Krishna will allow you to turn off the mind from experiencing the threefold miseries permanently.