Don't Abandon Ship!

            The desire to completely let oneself loose and forget all the troubles and forums of life is exemplified quite well in Euripides’ drama Bakkhai. The women run off into the wilderness, lose all sense of morality, and frolic in the woods away from family, responsibility, and civilized life. How could they just abandon their lives like that? How could they forget everything they hold dear?

The 'Abandon Family' ship has too many patrons

After thinking about it, I see those desires in people today. How many of you have considered just dropping out of college? Perhaps go gallivant the country just trying to get away from responsibility. I certainly have. Or when something big is about to happen in life, we desire to run away.

Perhaps more poignant is to look at how many parents (particularly fathers, but sometimes mothers too) abandon their family in search of goodness knows what. I have some great friends who had a parent desert them when they were young and can’t seem to rationalize why it happened.

The maenads personify this condition perfectly. They show us the craziness of letting it all go and running away. Agaue killed her own son because she let herself go too much. It is interesting to note that as soon as she makes it back to civilization she is able to get back to a more normal frame of mind. As soon as they “escape” from that which is their lives, they abandon all form of reason and would do something as unthinkable as murdering their own child. Had they never left they could have remained as a happy family in the city of their ancestors.

Is there a way to deal with this irrational desire to get away from it all? I have used sports for just such a purpose. It is a way to escape the rest of life and focus on that specific competition. I can go away from everything for a brief time, let it all go, and then make it back to regular life unscathed. Perhaps this is part of why watching sports are so popular in today’s world.