If you’re like us, you had plans for 2020. You watched as those plans changed, day by day and week after week. By May it was clear travel to the distant locations for which we had already purchased tickets in the first few months of the year was not going to happen. Tickets were cashed in, reservations cancelled, and tours called off.
Welcome to the alternative reality science fiction writers have been warning of for decades. I hope this experience has opened up your mind to the possibilities we ignored in the comfort of our daily sameness. And I personally think that routine, if you will, is what lulled us into believing tomorrow will be like today unless I get on an airplane and deliberately transport myself to a different reality. One of European sensibilities, or South American optimism, or even Asian mystery. Of course there are a multitude of destinations outside these such as safaris in Africa, camel rides in the Middle East or penguin peeping in the Antarctic. Whatever your alternative reality dreams, you can still ‘experience’ them from the comfort of your seclusion domicile.
It may take a modest investment on your part if you have not added streaming capability to your entertainment center. But doing so opens up the world, multiplying your options to near infinity. We converted our main monitor to Roku service, which was painful in that we no longer can see the local newscasters we had become used to. Another difference of our new reality. But it is amazing how little news we need to get from broadcast journalists now that we have social media feeding us with the headlines all day long.
One of the first binge days, which turned into a few weeks was an obscure series friends had suggested we watch: A Place to Call Home, on Acorn. This Australian series introduced us to not only the beauty of Australia, but the history, culture and conflicts of that society in a way we never would have noticed on a seven-day all-inclusive tour, or even a, for us, do it yourself exploration of interesting places and things from tour guide books. When we eventually visit down under, we will see it through a very different lens. We will look for different aspects than we would have otherwise.
And it is not just the world out there, waiting for us, that is important to prepare for. We binge watched TURN on Netflix, which is based on a historical book about the spies that enabled George Washington to be victorious in the Revolutionary War. We grew up in Upstate New York, not so far from the setting of this series, but we had no knowledge of those events.
We have even enjoyed transporting ourselves to an alternate reality written in the early 1960s by author Philip J. Dick, an author I read as a twelve-year-old boy. I remembered the premise of The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime, which is what if America had lost World War II and the US was occupied on the west coast by Japan and the east coast by Nazi Germany? I remember it was one of my favorite books back then, but to see what Hollywood could do to bring the story to life was gratifying. It gave the story texture and nuance not possible in a brief written form.
So what alternate realities will you transport yourself to from your domicile in preparation to look at the world from different perspectives when you next board that long-delayed flight?
