This is my first post on #philosophy, so pardon me if I'm not meeting the expected criteria.. Just wanted to share a thought I had today. If all goes well, I would later like to share a quite deeper idea I've had that I would like your thoughts on.
I believe I have noticed a pattern (which will be the upcoming topic I mentioned) in what people do for "fun," or particular interests and activities that we engage that make us happy. What happy means I will not go into, interpret it however you wish.
This pattern I noticed is that the things we love all have a trait in common- to give ourselves a detachment, a transcendence, or an escape- from all the other elements of our life and environment. All these things we do that make us happy, that we love to do and experience, are appealing because we find ourselves enraptured by it, completely and entirely, so that we lose ourself inside it until it's time to return our regular life.
To use a very appropriate example- Philosophy. I personally love the feeling of losing myself in the question why, or digging deep into the structures and standards of society, humanity, existence, etc.. I love being in a discussion with a group of people that for hours guides us through our own minds and leaves us refreshed, or even exhausted, when we leave the room. People who like to listen to music will close their eyes and enter the world of the song. For some, washing the dishes or cleaning the house is a momentary meditation and focus of mind and body. Athletes drown in the out-of-body feeling of victory, the rush of adrenaline, the runner's high or the yogi's deep breaths as they break the barriers of their limits. Those who do drugs like weed, or drink, are a good example of directly consuming stimulants to alter your perception of all the data in the world projecting towards you. Better yet, a mathematician or physicist who drowns themselves in the problems and algorithm that break down their mental parameters and leave them in crazed states of transcendence as they step out of the box of their daily level of thought.
So I ask, on the topic of escape: why (the great Question!) do we live for the things that remove us from our daily lives?