To each their own, but to me the only key easier to hit than the Escape key is the space bar, and returning to the home row is like a 20ms move. On the other hand, if you're actually using control keys in the (now standard) lower left and lower positions, then we're just on different planets. :)

I heard that IBM got the PC keyboard positioning wrong. You can remap this in both macOS and Windows and Linux so its not a big deal anymore. Use Esc<->Capslock and have a gentle vim/neovim existence.

I don't remap; I use ^[.