All throughout my life, when things have gotten a little too difficult for me, when I feel the world on my shoulders, I have always been able to escape to a good place where I can find light and safety. That place is my imagination. There, I have always found safe harbor in a world of make-believe where I can imagine myself floating on the clouds, or dancing on the moon, or even talking to animals in their language. Yes, my feet may be tethered to Earth, but my spirit can soar with help from my imagination. I have come to regard myself as an escape artist. 

Generally, when we think of escape artists, we Harry Houdini comes to mind – he is submerged in a water tank and bound with chains he must break before he runs out of oxygen and drowns. But there are other kinds of escape artists, too – including you and me. 

I believe deeply that each of us is a little like Houdini, capable of freeing ourselves from the shackles we wear. Each of us has the inherent power to transport ourselves out of our straitjacketed misery into a better world. The way to do so is to sit quietly for a little while, try to shut off the world, and enter a new one of our own making. 

Through our imaginations we build castles in the sky, climb tall mountains, and soar with eagles. I first discovered my imagination as a boy growing up in a family beset by many emotional and financial problems. Back then, when all the screaming, the yelling, and fighting at home got to me, I would actively retreat in silence to a safer place – my imagination. There, my soul found refuge and comfort. You see, no fighting was allowed in my imagined world.. That world was a better one than the one I was living in with my family where no one in my family ever seemed happy.

That was also the way it was for me a few years ago when I needed to find hope in dealing with illness among several of my family members and in coping with a daily four-hour train/bus commute to my job. These problems seemed at the time to be sucking the life out of me. Those days as I rode to work I’d look out the windows of the train and see ugly telephone poles and worn shacks whirling past me and wonder if this was all there was to life. To find a positive answer – actually to find some peace of mind -- I’d escape in my imagination and insist I was seeing instead a tropical paradise or flying in the sky with the birds or swimming with dolphins. I started writing these thoughts down and eventually they became notes for a book of interactive exercises to transform the things that were bothering me into something better. Tell me, name one person who hasn’t needed to become an escape artist some time?

I began thinking about escape artists as people who refuse to give into the negative and choose instead to think positively. They insist on having hope in their lives. Writing about such escape artists became my way of finding a chink of light in a dark place and also reminding myself of all the things that make life worth living.

So, who are these escape artists? For example, I wrote: ‘’Escape artists search for butterflies in unexpected places; they know these creatures are waiting to be discovered.‘’

Then I went a step further, and asked myself this question: ‘’This is the wish I will make next time I see a butterfly’’ and left some blank space to fill in with a response. I decided to place a question prompt after each example of what an escape artists does with the thought that a reader, in trying to come up with a response to the question, would free her or his own mind.

Another time, I wrote: ‘’Escape Artists can plumb the depths of the ocean just by gazing into a fish bowl.’’
And I asked myself: ‘’The movie scene or painting that I have always wanted to step into is:’’ (You can write your own answer.) Or, ‘’Escape Artists can imagine life on distant planets.’’
And, I wrote this question prompt: ‘’These are the words I’d use to greet an alien.’’

Or this one: ‘’Escape Artists know they can discover the wonders of the universe in a tiny library.’’
And with this thought came this question prompt: ‘’The book tht opened the world to me:’’ 

Here are some more examples:
‘’Escape artists can recapture a forgotten memory just by sniffing a smell.’’
I then ask: ‘’One of my favorite memory smells is:’’ (Think for a moment, was it the smell of honeysuckle growing in your grandmother’s garden, or the cookies she would bake specially for you?)

‘’Escape Artists can imagine what it must feel like to bathe in rose petals.’’
Question prompt: ‘’Someone who loves me enough to prepare such a wonderful, healing bath:’’

‘’Escape artists can look up at the sky and see clouds of joy.’’
Question prompt: ‘’This is a shape I’d like to see in the clouds:’’

‘’Escape artists never walk down the streets without expecting that a great discovery or wonderful surprise will be just around the corner.’’
Question prompt: ‘’A discovery which I still hope to make:’’

I hope you get the point by now. Try hard, very hard to think of all the things that give you pleasure in life now or which you hope will give you pleasure in the future. Make a list of them, and tuck this list into your wallet so that you can look at these good things from time to time, maybe on those days when your boss in driving you crazy with nutty deadlines or you’re sitting in a doctor’s office worried about your health. 

Try to remember that escape artists do not sit back and allow life to hurt them. Instead, first by dreams and then by will and work, they shape their lives into something better. The best way to escape is to journey within one’s soul and heart to discover what one feels and wants.

A journalist and author of 16 books ,Bill Zimmerman new book about escape artists is titled, ‘’Doodles & Daydreams: Your Passport for Becoming An Escape Artist, ’’ published by Gibbs Smith. 
You can find excerpts from the book on his web site at: http://www.billztreasurechest.com/escape_artist.html. 
It can be ordered at Amazon.com or through any book store. He also has just launched another escape vehicle – http://www.makebeliefscomix.com -- where you can create your own comic strips online. 
You can choose from fun animal and human characaters with different emotions, fill in blank talk and thought balloons, and find story prompts to help you along. You can also write to Zimmerman at wmz@aol.com. He’d love to hear what you do to escape.

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