“With great daydreaming, comes great responsibility”, I thought as I didn’t hear the last few sentences my mother said to me in the car, gazing at oddly, unformed, ginormous, cotton-candy clouds in the horizon of the Albanian alps that sprung out from our island’s coast. I was thinking of a good punch-line to start this writing with, and while my mother anxiously laid out all the to-dos of our business that I had to follow through while she would be out of town, this paragraph’s punch-line, actually turned out to be more accurate than ever. In that very moment. “Sorry mom”, I thought, and I had to ask her to repeat everything she said, and with that pissed-off side-eye she gave me, she continued with a disappointed sigh to repeat it all again.
Daydreamer/ˈdeɪ.driː.mər/ a person who often thinks about doing something else or being somewhere else, instead of paying attention to what is happening where they are now;
Thank you Cambridge Dictionary, that put its well… Well, well enough. For those who choose to see a world in black, and white nonetheless. Being an avid daydreamer like myself, when it comes to mindfulness, being present, and managing to not hinder away my attention span from basically anything, requires not just effort; But also, it feels like, a practice involving some sort of physical strain.
This past week, I approached meditation, for the first time in my life, in a serious matter of course. All previous attempts lasted less than a day, and were usually guided by “spiritual guru” voice-overs. So this time, it was good old fashioned meditation, in silence. I decided I need to be able to turn off the “daydreamer mind”, because it will tear me apart before I even realise it (It has, but I liked to make myself think that my psychosomatic reactions are not stemmed from there, when they actually are). In my mind, the world was always a movie. Other times in colour, other times in grey tones. As a child, school made for the best daydreaming. Essentially, the best movies. I could turn off my brain entirely, and go far out to lands, and people, that all were shaped to my own, personal fantasy. I became the director of these movies, and could do anything I wanted with them. The only thing missing from my time at school, was a little bit of popcorn, and a director’s seat. This made my teachers indifferent towards me, as I was always quiet, and a good student to a good extent, so whenever a question came up from them, I usually always knew the answer. If I couldn’t daydream though, I would draw all over my desk. My alertness for school, was frankly minuscule. I did of course hate school, but even later on in life, daydreaming persisted like an enjoyable, yet, incurable syndrome. Even in things I seemed to admire so; Then it felt like a re-run in my head, or even better, a director’s cut finally being released. Even today, sometimes I get so caught up in my own head, another movie plays again and again, and while I practice to stay alert, I simply put the movie on pause. But of course I’ll continue it later. I have to. Since having discovered meditation however, there is a clearer perception to what I want to think of, and what I need to think of.
In the present moment, I’ve found that there are very few things I need to pay attention to. Specifically, an interesting example, once having meditated, I find that I am much more able to read a book without my mind trailing off and just skimming words. In the past, I would constantly have to reread a page 2-3 times. Someone might think that I’m reading books that I am not actually interested in, but that’s not quite it. The way I see it, the moment my brain takes a chance to step away from reality, it will (perhaps, we daydreamers detest this reality?). And relaxing activities can do that for a brain. So, they relax the brain, where it becomes possible to enter a “flow” state, and therefore your brain can trail off effortlessly. And that’s fine for any normal human being. It’s a great anti-stress mechanism. Though, for a daydreamer, the daydreaming, can exhaust you when you just want to get some reading done.
It is evident that writing, reading, and placing your concentration into creative outlets, allows for not just the mind, but the psyche as well to jubilate. For a very creative person, and a very deep daydreamer, sometimes there is a contradictory effect: The more you daydream, the less you actually enjoy it. It has become a subconscious manifestation of a tick that you can’t get rid of. You daydream when you’re supposed to be helping someone out, when you’re supposed to be listening to your partner, when you’re trying to get a simple task done.
On various occasions, daydreaming has ruined my perception. While being optimistic is one thing, and setting expectations another, daydreaming can often romanticise for you a world, that doesn’t exist. My younger self day-dreamt of grand lovers and friendships, platonic, and ethereal in their being, yet all-in-all, they were all just a mirage woven into an egg-shell-like mind. Because the truth shattered that mirage ever-so-effortlessly. Reality swoops in, and there the inner fragility swoons. Growing has taught me, you can daydream all-right, but make sure to do it when it only involves you. You can’t go around daydreaming of other people, it’s a forbidden spell.
If you constantly think of someone, and mould them from your own mind, there’s a lot of energy at waste. And you’re not just wasting energy, you’re also creating a mirage of them. A great example is that of my partner; For many years I romanticised the person he was, without knowing him. Yet, he turned out to be much more interesting, and more beautiful as a human being that I could have ever thought up. Though, there was a perceptual conflict within myself which took a hefty amount of time to overcome; To eventually overcome the mirage I had made of him. Even though it was lesser than his actual state, there was still a need of undoing necessary for my brain. Because that’s how strong our perceptions can be put upon us. It’s all until we’ve seen the other side of the dime.
Shamans state that thinking of something produces a hundred times more, energy than actually speaking of it. That is why they say that when good things happen, you shouldn’t speak of them. That is how you jinx them, as speaking is a low-levelled frequency considered by them, that when sent to the wrong person, isn’t perceived or could possibly be received in negative conditions. Even in practices of visualisation, you can think up anything you want, and it will eventually happen, as long as you try to bring the image to your mind very often, and believe in it! Thought, creates vibrations. These vibrations to me translate like they are like inner-soul waves being sent out to the universe. Some of them might make it, and some might not. I can see everything I want in my mind, and at the same time, I can positively state that a lot of scenes that I have imagined, and wanted to be true, kind of did happen… Or, at least I thought them out so much, and was just really good at guessing what would come next.
Thus, if a daydreamer, is just someone who visualises a lot, and is just working (in their own head) to get the life they want, why have we condemned them so? Because daydreamers, are still the ones who hope, and believe in a prettier world. They live in grey-tone movies, because there is no black and white indeed. And no-one in the “false”-world likes this about them. They want them grounded, and they want them out of their great world, to accompany those still stuck in the hellish platoon to fight together the unjust world. But daydreamers, don’t want to fight. At all. But of course, while we can understand the daydreamers, we must also understand those “fighting”.
In my own attempt to mindfulness, I can see where I slip away. I comprehend the moments where I’ve failed to be mindful and present, and choose to place them as examples to avoid. Instead of spending five, speedily and haphazardly, autopilot-minded minutes to get a job done, I could take a step back and think, “What’s the best way to get this done?”. Perhaps it could actually need just two minutes, but an organised, thought-out resolution saves the day. This example sets us to understand being present and mindful in simple terms. And if this turns into a daily practice, then we actually become better for ourselves and others. Because being present and mindful in consistency leads to bettering your present state, and blocking out the possibility of you “jumping” into another world. Because no matter how beautiful the world of a daydreamer is… No-one else lives there.
Besides daydreaming ultimately being a lonely camp, there is one hidden defect of daydreaming; One of the biggest reasons people suffer from anxiety is because it has become a modern-day-plague of chronic worry. And if you’re a daydreamer, you damn-well know, that you have also fallen sometimes into the pit of not being able to daydream just nice and kind things. In today’s world, we’re constantly worrying about what will happen in the next five minutes, tomorrow, or in 6 months from now. It’s a splendid thing to daydream about that big renovation you want, and to make in 3 months from now happen, but you really can’t do much about it until then. Most people with anxiety often fear for the worst that could happen until then, and become fully-ill-paranoid. This is the so-called, “day-nightmaring” effect as I like to call it. Because in-fact, anxiety is just day-nightmaring. Seeing nightmares during the day, without really wanting to, but that dumb brain of yours can’t help it.
As for the example with the renovation, let’s state the following: You can prepare and work to get it done until the next three months, but each and every individual day must be treated as a external link to it, and not actually as one continuing link. The continuing link often sounds like an ideal approach, but often I see that it “boxes” people (and myself, well-proven) into a prolonged mental pattern of nervousness until the moment of the “renovation” comes. Instead, when we take as a “given” all the work we’ve got to do until then, and then place smaller, joyful goals throughout our day, we can plan our days to be fruitful, rather than mundane. We can enjoy every day life that way, instead of waiting for some particular moment to prove it to us so. A “secret” way that helped me keep-up with my literary lifestyle, even though during some periods work’s overload consumed me, was making to-do lists that only involved things I like. Such as, “Today, Tuesday I shall read and write poetry”. And somehow, seeing that on paper really pushed me to get those fun activities done, after all my other daily tasks had been completed. Heck, I managed to make myself draw after 5 months, just because I wrote it down and thought, “You’ll be a big hypocrite if you don’t at-least try to draw”. Okay, I can be harsh on myself sometimes, but if you don’t kick yourself in the ass every now and then, who else should?
Daydreaming a life isn’t enough, you have to take the actions, day by day, to get there.
In another aspect of daydreaming, I recall being able to draw inspiration from the smallest yet prettiest things, such as flowers, to conjure up a poetic beat. Yet, nowadays this “musing” seems to have been altered. As I am leisurely sweeping the terrace, somehow words, and even entire worlds trickle down from my mind to my mouth, where I repeat the same rhythmical rhymes over and over, until I grab my phone to make note of them. For all I know, I could be cleaning my cat’s litter out, and suddenly there is something lyrical going on. This made me realise that perhaps, purposely trying to daydream in order to achieve an inspirational burst could in fact be as prolific as doing a simple house chore.
We’re not born daydreamers, I think. We’ve been conditioned to think that all daydreamers are artists, hopeless romantics, and all those teen-esque, dramatised notions. No, the great daydreamers, those who have mastered the practice of escaping into their own universe, are those perhaps who never really turn their “daydreaming” off. They’re in there for themselves, and only choose to come out for others they specifically respect enough to do so for. The daydreamer is not naive, the daydreamer is in fact very aware and alert. The daydreamer has met this world, perhaps not just in this life, but in the previous, and perhaps could fathom a possibility of the next, and dreams out their own world on purpose. The true daydreamers are multi-taskers; You speak to them, and yet they’re away, they’re present to you as well. Is this the perfect balance? Is this the true Nirvana? Is this perhaps, the ultimate state of meditation as well? A levelled consciousness possible through the human’s flesh?
An excellent film about a daydreamer, who falls upon great tragedy, is Lars von Trier’s “Dancer In The Dark”. If you see this film, you will not just understand the daydreamer, you will understand daydreaming more as well as a coping mechanism. Because after-all, it is just that.
Thank you for reading this far! If you liked this “MISUSE” post, perhaps you could enjoy the previous one too where I unravel about individualism.
I read a lot of stuff on email. Wish you could just email a response back.
Daydreaming is like a tick line is funny. I can’t stand it. Trailing off in the middle of someone’s conversation then they ask you a question and you’re like uhhh.
Love this post 🦋