|2 minute read|
A little joy of mine lately has been daydreaming, eyes open but feeling somewhere else. A different place to be at the flexibility of your mind. Micro-dosing on escapism, indulging in your desires. Where do you go when you drift off? Glossed over eyes, slowed breathing, science says we spend six years of our lives dreaming. And about every hour, we spend 8 minutes of that time in the daze of our own creation. Blanketed in reality and still finding a way to exist in two spaces. Can we give purpose to our wanderings?
A mirror of what’s happening around us, our daydreams work to fill the space that might be lacking. Often out of boredom, we can't help but float away. But cognitively identifying where that gap lies, can help us to color our world with more bliss. Is there a place the body yearns to occupy? A new city, sights and sounds vivid with unfamiliarity, senses piqued everywhere you go. A quiet library, people watching, shuffling of pages, a quiet murmur of voices. A warm place, like the beach or a meadow, where the sun kisses your cheeks as they crisp in the light, where the earth lays under you, cradling your bones, soft to the touch. So we go there in our daydreams, when it beats the office, or morning traffic, or the dentist. But can we find a site in our real world that is this place? Even a slight resemblance offers much abundance to our desire.
Or perhaps we tug on our heart strings during the day and we ruminate on what it might be like to hold someone. To look over and see them in the passenger seat of the car. To share a joke and indulge in laughter. To sit on the floor late at night and talk of our troubles, or our favorite memories or our plans for the next day. Wishing for someone who is miles away. And the daydream is better than the reality without them, faces that are not theirs, finding bits of things you know they would like. Together in the spirit is better than without. Our daydreams connecting us to others, a vehicle for longing.
Perhaps I’m impartial to the grandeur of daydreaming, when the sheer act of it already has a place in existing routines. You might dream of a pair of shoes, or a new pair of pants before ordering them online. You could think of all the ways a new phone or computer could make your life easier. Or even dreaming up plans before you send someone an invite. Lean into the small musings to understand why it stirs excitement. What about it becomes alluring?
Is there a real reaction that comes from living in these daydreams? A smile cracked into your face, a stifled giggle from a silly made-up situation. I remember hearing once before that the brain can’t decipher between what is real and what isn’t. Benefiting from the real feelings we can make ourselves experience from our dream, a level of trickery to feel what we want. Inhabiting two spaces to create one where both can intertwine. Are we dreaming to escape or are we dreaming to play?
Chasing daydreams, as equally as ambitions, leading towards the path of pure joy. Do you make space, do you make time to let the mind wander off? Following thoughts down the rabbit hole to arrive at something so far from what began this train of thought. Able to backtrack your monologue to see where it started. An internal game of telephone. Where are we going when we daydream? Perhaps next time pack a bag and stay a while.
See you in my daydreams,
natalie <3
