The
difference between a vision and a daydream
is the audacity to act.
Steven Furtrick
When
you compare the sorrows of real life
to the pleasures of the imaginary one,
you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.
Alexandre Dumas
“What
a day for a daydream,” croons John Sebastian of The Lovin’
Spoonful. In point of fact, everyday is a daydreaming day because
all of us, everyday, indulge in daydreams; including that rare
individual who has realized all of his dreams in respect to
accomplishment and procurement. Like the number of zeros in
a bank account, daydreaming knows no endgame. There is always
something better, grander, a happier outcome, a bigger “bundle
of joy for a day dreaming boy.”
When
did man begin to daydream? When he became human (self-conscious),
when he first uttered “I am, I exist,” when he understood
that he was mortal, that one day he would no longer exist, when
he understood that not only could he judge others but the other
could judge him – all reasons enough to wish it were otherwise.
Et voilà – enter the daydream and immediate
rewards -- rescued (self-removed) from the rank and file of
reality.
From
his humble beginnings to the present, man has been his own best
witness in respect to his historical inability to deal with
the implications (the burden) of self-consciousness, which is
why, without exception, every culture recourses substances that
facilitate the numbing of the neo-cortex (the reversion to animal
consciousness). At some very early point in his evolution he
discovered that aside from its practical applications, daydreaming
(idling in fantasy) was an effective and readily available means
of temporarily escaping his condition (self-consciousness).
To relieve himself of the anxiety produced by the hostage-holding,
judgmental gaze of the other and the ever looming fact of his
mortality, especially when survival was a day to day proposition,
he resorted to daydreaming – a species-specific faculty
that specializes in creating alternative realities.
The
daydream served as a correction/vehicle that provided temporary
respite from the hard realities of the hard scrabble life. If
in 5000 B.C. the tribesman wasn’t the hunter he wished
to be, he would daydream a more accomplished version of that
hunter. If a rainfall shortage threatened a vital food source,
the shaman or medicine man would daydream of having direct access
and influence over the rain gods.
Our
daydreams are windows into the souls of who we are in respect
to what is unfulfilled or lacking in our lives or in the lives
of our families and communities.
The
evolutionary purpose of daydreaming is to communicate to the
daydreamer through wishful thinking a better version of him
or herself that would serve as an incentive to become that better,
that more inventive, more achieving person. As an imaginative
faculty, daydreaming is the means by which an individual or
community attempts to meet a challenge or solve a problem. When
men lived in tribes and hunted animals with spears, a spear
fallen short might result in a daydream that prefigured the
invention of a better spear, or the bow and arrow. If a tribe’s
precious livestock was being stalked by a predator, the daydreamer,
repurposing the givens of his immediate environment, might come
up with a blueprint for the prototype of an enclosure that would
secure the food supply.
It
could very well be that all the civilizational advancements
that mark man’s progress to the present age were first
glimpsed in the form of a daydream or act of the imagination.
Daydreams
are metaphysical constructs that link the dreamer to the unknown
and unfamiliar. We best deal with the contingencies of life
by imaginatively inserting ourselves into future situations
(job interview, project deadline, move to another city) so we
can better choose from the imagined variety of possible responses.
While the future is an unknown quantity, the daydream allows
the mind to temporarily disengage the body and slipstream into
an ether-like future in order to not so much predict an outcome
but to map out or familiarize oneself with a place or circumstance
one has never encountered. Is it not an uncommon occurrence
to daydream about a past event and try to imagine how it should
have been in order to be better prepared if and when facing
that same or similar situation or challenge?
What
distinguishes daydreaming from the way we comport ourselves
in real life is the total absence of editing: it is a wholly
unselfconscious, no holds barred, no one ever-need-know activity
which is its seduction. Daydreaming marks out a realm without
borders or restrictions, and generally speaking it is a significantly
(if not deliriously) more pleasant (enticing) space than the
real world. In our daydreams we are the world’s best at
everything: athlete, seducer, thief, world leader, inventor,
assassin, polyglot, mathematician.
But
daydreaming is not all about happy endings. Certain individuals
(depressed, psychotic, suicidal) are vulnerable to negative
or maladaptive dreaming. As a coping mechanism, people who resort
to negative daydreaming or worst case scenario fantasies are
often subconsciously preparing themselves for a real life negative
outcome, so when it arrives it won’t hit so hard. In the
majority of these cases the daydreamer fears that he won’t
be able to live up to an externally imposed expectation that
holds him captive until he is able to produce a positive, corrective
daydream.
However
a significant number of daydreams, if not most, have no practical
purpose other than to idle away time or escape into an alternative,
sugar-coated reality. If I’m wheelchair bound, daydreaming
that I am a top athlete is more of an indulgence than an incentive
to better myself seeing that the dream won’t have any
practical impact on my radically restricted personal life. If
in real life women don’t find me attractive, reinventing
through daydreaming my physical appearance will have no purchase
without the intervention of a handsomely paid plastic surgeon.
For
the most part, daydreaming serves two masters: our productive
life and the pleasure principle. In respect to the latter, one
can become physiologically addicted to daydreaming like one
becomes addicted to drugs that are used to address real or imagined
pain or unhappiness. Freud speaks of “the human desire
to alter the existing and often unsatisfactory or unpleasant
world of reality.” How often have we heard is said of
certain individuals that he/she is detached from reality. But
whether or not we are productively daydreaming or escaping reality,
nature wants us to daydream and rewards us for it. When we enjoy
something, the brain releases a hormone (dopamine) that instructs
the mind/body to keep engaging in that activity.
Facilitating
and profiting from the universal activity of daydreaming is
the world of advertising. Marketing professionals use their
skill sets to convince consumers that the contents of their
daydreams are not merely products of the imagination, but are
concrete and readily available for purchase. Products are tailored
to purposefully inter-phase with our daydreams, to bridge the
gap (Gap), at a price, between the unreal and real world. I
will probably never get to meet Jennifer Lopez but if I wear
the same lipstick she wears, or brand name jeans she endorses,
I will be convinced that I am experiencing something of JL’s
real world.
In
all cultures, the ubiquity of the super-hero, strongman, exceptional
genius are all extensions and elaborations of our daydreams.
In an earlier era, these super humans (Achilles, Hercules) were
formalized in early Greek drama. Attending theatre we got to
see our daydreams played out before us. Today we resort to comic
books or cinema for the same effect. Like Superman, Spider-man,
Ultraman, Wonder Woman et al, we all want to be idolized,
imitated, emulated, and there isn’t one of us who hasn’t
been a hero in his imagination.
As
an empowerment tool, the daydream transformed into cultural
artifact knows no eclipse. Including 2nd and 3rd hand transactions,
over a billion comic book copies are sold per year, such is
the importance we attach to our daydreaming life as a means
of escaping the unpleasant facts on the ground, most of which
revolve around our god-given mediocrity.
Daydreaming
alters the chemistry in the brain such that we can, however
temporarily, physiologically experience the feelings and elation
associated with being famous or historically significant. The
time and monies people spend on their comic book collections,
fantasy literature and escapist cinema/TV rival the monies we
spend on drugs and alcohol, which speaks to the addictive quality
of daydreaming and significant alternative worlds it generates,
now facilitated by computer technology (virtual reality).
From
a psychoanalytical perspective, since there is no consensus
on what is the purpose and meaning of the dreams we generate
in our sleep, most of which are highly symbolic and other worldly,
one would expect our medical professionals who claim to be able
to plumb the mind’s deep would place more importance on
a patient’s daydreams, but apparently that is not always
the case.
Get
a patient to reveal the content of his daydreams and in most
cases the nature of the patient’s problems will become
immediately transparent. A married woman, who can’t sleep,
who suffers from loss of appetite, has spurned all her women
friends, but who daydreams of exchanging nocturnal massages
with another woman might be telling herself something about
her sexual orientation. A subaltern in a large company who daydreams
of being its CEO might not be happy working the night shift.
Daydreams
are our confessions. The Catholic Church understood the importance
of confession, but the weekly ritual cannot compete with the
disclosures we make to ourselves via daydreaming. Most of us
wouldn’t dare communicate the content of certain daydreams
to anyone other than our selves, and that includes those with
whom we are intimate.
Since
becoming self-aware is universally regarded as an admirable
pursuit, one of the major functions of daydreaming, a wholly
unredacted activity, is to facilitate the disclosure of truth
– the sighting of our real selves stripped of all pretense.
At a public gathering, I wish my neighbour and ‘good’
friend all the best in his new job; in my recurring daydream
I want him to fail. From a Gore Vidal interview: “Every
time a friend succeeds something inside me dies.”
In
other words if we’re looking to account for the world
as it turns, we merely have to sing-a-long to know what everyone
from Putin to the proletariat is daydreaming: “everybody
wants to rule the world.”
Short
of that winner take all scenario, today promises to be yet another
perfect day among a succession of perfect days “for a
daydreaming boy, dreaming of a bundle of joy.”
