Day 1 of The Magician's Nephew

I've been surprised so far how much of this story I actually know. I could have sworn, prior to starting, that I'd never read the book or seen any commentary / TV series about it. Well, maybe I read it a long time ago, or maybe I've just picked up a lot from general Narnia commentaries. Whatever the reason, its interesting to find out how much I remembered and how much is new to me.

Reading chapters 1-6, I was struck by the way in which travelling to another world and the dangers it brings seems to be linked up with exploration into unknown places. In The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the children find Narnia through playing Hide and Seek into a forbidden room, in  The Silver Chair Eustace and Jill are trying to escape through a locked door. There's also an element of trying to escape from everyday life, often from those everyday badies of non-sympathetic grown-ups or bullies.

Is it like this in our everyday lives? Do we try to escape the day to day problems by travelling into the unknown, only to find greater troubles? And is this a necessary process to find or own 'Narnia', or is 'Narnia' the way of getting out of situations we should not have put ourselves into in the first place?