There comes a stage in our adult lives where imagination begins to closely resemble wasting time.
As children we could spend hours in the garden, convinced fairies were living in the hollows of the trees and would only come out when we shut our eyes. An adult does the same thing, and let’s just say it raises some concern…
Aa adults we must become very good at reality. We monitor mortgage rates, discount prices & the weather forecast becomes the most visited site on our phones. We count the steps we take, how much sleep we get and know exactly how long it will take for a parcel to arrive.
Everyone is informed, connected and surprisingly – increasingly drained. But perhaps what we are missing is not another form to be productive – rather the opposite. Now I’m not suggesting you abandon reality entirely and stop paying the electric bill because you’ve decided to become a woodland elf. No, no – I am talking about the private and completely harmless business of daydreaming:
Imagining backstories for strangers passing by, picturing what life could look like if you weren’t so restrained by sensibility.
Children are told to have dreams, adults to have plans. And yes, plans are very necessary. But there is also some danger in being so focused on reality that you stop thinking about what you truly desire. This is where fantasy becomes incredibly revealing. Try to reflect on things you often daydream about:
Living somewhere new, learning a new language or skill, feeling valued at work, or simply having more time for yourself.
The details of daydreams may often appear fanciful, but the sentiment beneath them is not.
Sigmund Freud said that daydreams split away from the principle of reality and act as the ‘pleasure principle’. We daydream about real, internal fantasies, like standing up to a boss or receiving some grand recognition, to satisfy the unmet needs of our ego (without facing the real world consequences of telling your arch enemy to f…all off the face of the earth)
In other words, our fantasies often reflect repressed emotions and desires. They can show us things that we should be prioritising in our lives. A fantasy can also be a clue – that we’re bored, need a career change, or to visit a new place.
Imagination can reveal to us possibilities, before we are courageous enough to take them seriously. Almost all things we now think of as ‘ordinary’, were once someone’s crazy and improbable passing thought – someone imagined themselves sailing, flying, talking to someone on a whole different continent.
Imagination is therefore not the enemy of reality, but one of the ways in which reality can change.
Humans have always filled dark nights with tales, given names to stars, invented terrible, horrible monsters that live in shadows and created whole other worlds inside of paintings. It would appear that we have an unfathomable need to look at what already exists and wonder about what else could be.
So how do we become so serious as adults? Is it because certainty is rewarded, because we’re expected to know where we are, where we’re headed and what we’ll be doing exactly five years from now?
But fantasy is not a contract, it’s a playground. To wonder about things is a form of freedom. You don’t really need to believe that one day you’ll live in a cozy cottage in the cotswolds – why not picture it anyway? Not everything we enjoy has to be productive.
There is pleasure to be found in doing something completely unnecessary with your own mind. Especially today, when so much of our time is taken by other things, people, our phones, the news. Fantasy offers a retreat from the measures of productivity – it is one thing that is entirely and completely your own.
Fantasy allows us to envision our lives in a different light – and it is often the first step in making the changes you so often dream about.
The most captivating lives were not built from what we already know to be possible.
Until next time.