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?
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| 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.