Escapism, we are led to believe, is evidence of a deficiency in

Host: The train station was half-asleep beneath a grey dawn — the kind of hour where the air feels like a secret, and even sound walks softly. The departure board clicked in slow, deliberate rhythm, changing destinations like someone shuffling through possible lives. The smell of coffee and diesel drifted through the air, a strange perfume of transit and fatigue.

Jack sat alone on a wooden bench near platform six, a small suitcase at his feet, a ticket in his hand, and an expression caught somewhere between anticipation and surrender. Jeeny stood nearby, leaning against a steel pillar, watching him with the quiet curiosity of someone who’s seen too many people running from ghosts and calling it travel.

The loudspeaker coughed static, then silence.

Jack: “J. Maarten Troost said, ‘Escapism, we are led to believe, is evidence of a deficiency in character, a certain failure of temperament, and like so many -isms, it is to be strenuously avoided. “How do you expect to get ahead?” people ask. But the question altogether misses the point. The escapist doesn’t want to get ahead. He simply wants to get away.’”

He smirked faintly, tracing a thumb along the edge of his ticket. “Finally, someone who understands me.”

Jeeny: “You’re not escaping, Jack. You’re avoiding.”

Host: Her voice was calm but edged with something sharper — compassion mixed with accusation.

Jack: “Isn’t that what escapism is? Avoiding things that bruise you?”

Jeeny: “No. Escapism is pretending you’re free when you’ve only changed the scenery.”

Host: He looked up at her, his grey eyes tired but curious. “So what? You’d rather I stay put? Keep drowning in the same place every day just because it’s noble?”

Jeeny: “No,” she said softly. “I’m saying drowning somewhere new still means you can’t swim.”

Host: The train horn echoed in the distance, a long, mournful sound — the kind that makes you feel like you’ve already left even before you’ve stood up.

Jack: “You know, Troost’s right. Everyone worships progress. Everyone wants to ‘get ahead.’ Career, status, achievement — it’s all just polite language for running in a circle faster. Maybe some of us don’t want to win the race. Maybe we just want out of the arena.”

Jeeny: “And yet you’re still timing yourself.”

Jack: “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jeeny: “You’re still measuring escape by destination. By motion. Real escape doesn’t need a timetable or a ticket — it happens the moment you stop chasing the noise inside you.”

Host: A pause — heavy, electric. The sound of footsteps echoed down the empty platform, fading into the vast hollow of the station.

Jack: “You sound like a monk.”

Jeeny: “Maybe monks are just the only people who learned that the self follows you everywhere — even across oceans.”

Host: She moved closer, her hand brushing the back of the bench. The light from the overhead lamps caught the glint in her eyes. “You’re not running from a place, Jack. You’re running from the person you were in it.”

Jack: “Maybe that’s the point.”

Jeeny: “But what happens when he shows up in the next city? In the same skin, with the same regrets, just wearing a cleaner shirt?”

Host: His jaw tightened, but the smile that followed was faint — weary, honest.

Jack: “Then maybe I’ll just keep going. City to city. Until the noise fades.”

Jeeny: “It never fades. It waits.”

Host: The train lights approached now, distant and dreamlike. The hum of the approaching engine filled the station like a heartbeat — slow, inevitable.

Jack: “You make escapism sound like cowardice.”

Jeeny: “No,” she said quietly. “I think it’s longing. But the kind that doesn’t heal. Escapism is hunger disguised as freedom.”

Jack: “And what’s wrong with hunger?”

Jeeny: “Nothing. As long as you’re willing to feed it with truth, not fantasy.”

Host: He exhaled, long and slow. The train screeched into the platform — bright, loud, alive. For a moment, the light washed over them both, erasing the boundary between the stayers and the goers.

Jack: “You ever just want to disappear, Jeeny? Not die, not quit — just… vanish. Be somewhere where no one expects anything of you.”

Jeeny: “All the time. But then I realize disappearing doesn’t fix anything. It just makes you harder to find when you finally want to come home.”

Host: The doors slid open with a hiss. A handful of passengers stepped off, their faces carrying the quiet look of people who’d just been somewhere else but hadn’t actually arrived anywhere.

Jeeny: “You know what Troost was really saying?” she asked. “That escapism isn’t failure. It’s honesty. It’s the recognition that sometimes, you need distance just to see clearly. But the danger is thinking that distance itself is the cure.”

Jack: “So what’s the cure?”

Jeeny: “Understanding what you’re escaping from — and why it still has power over you.”

Host: Her words fell like stones into water, their ripples spreading in the silence.

Jack: “Maybe I’ll figure that out on the way.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. Just don’t confuse movement with meaning.”

Host: The conductor called out, the sound slicing through the quiet.

Jack stood, grabbing his bag, but didn’t move toward the door yet. “You think I’m making a mistake?”

Jeeny: “No,” she said. “I think you’re making a beginning. Just promise me you’ll know the difference.”

Host: The train whistle blew again, urgent now. He gave her a small nod — half gratitude, half goodbye — and stepped aboard. Through the window, she saw him take a seat, eyes fixed not on the horizon, but on his own reflection in the glass.

The train began to move, slow at first, then faster — until it was gone, swallowed by dawn and distance.

Jeeny stood alone on the platform, the steam rising around her, the air thick with echoes.

Host: And in that soft, cinematic silence, Troost’s words echoed — tender, wry, devastatingly human:

“Escapism, we are led to believe, is evidence of a deficiency in character, a certain failure of temperament… The escapist doesn’t want to get ahead. He simply wants to get away.”

Because not all wanderers seek new lands —
some are just trying to leave the weight
of knowing behind.

Escapism is not cowardice.
It is the longing to breathe
in a world that keeps holding its breath.

But every journey — even one to nowhere —
eventually circles back
to the only place left to face:
the self you tried so hard to outrun.