We love our fantasies. We all live in our heads, conjuring, dreaming, creating new worlds, reliving things that happened years ago. It’s natural.
Part of the reason we don’t dwell in reality is because work dwells there. That takes up a huge chunk of time during each day. It tires us out, stresses certain people, and puts many in a frame of mind to escape.
This makes fertile ground for the businesses that cater to fantasy, which can be defined way more broadly you might think. Most of us would say a fantasy is about something we hope makes us happy, but the odds are against it. We fantasize, making ourselves feel better, getting pleasure from something that will never occur.
But fantasies go deeper than that. Any time we are delving into something that triggers the happiness sensors and sends images and thoughts to our brains can be considered a fantasy. We’re thinking about something and it’s not specifically the activity we are engaged in. So we are fantasizing.
If you accept that definition, we work to escape. Yes, we commute to our jobs, put in our time, have our moments of joy and accomplishment, and stay focused for extended periods of time, but we are also thinking about what we will have for lunch, taking the dogs for an enjoyable walk or the book we want to read when we get home. Those are our daydreams in the 8-5 world.
Take the boring meeting, for example. Are you fantasizing in there? Do you enter the room with a razor focus to listen intently to everything said, provide spectacular input and field questions ? Or do you fade away, watching the speaker’s lips flap while you stifle a yawn and relive that fishing trip you took when you were 12?
We also pretend about things going on right in front of our faces. We choose not to face what is really going on.
An example of this is parents who watch their kids participate in athletics. If your son plays baseball and only nine get on the field at one time, then players 10-16 on the roster have been deemed substitutes and are less likely to see action.
Though that is a coach’s decision and we can all disagree with coaches (witness TV sports shows, and talking sports heads on radio), at some point parents have to recognize their kid plays at a certain level that either gets him or her on the field or continuing to ride the bench. You can keep pretending he is better than some other player, but usually if you ask around and face reality, the kid who is playing ahead of him is better.
It’s hard. I know, I’ve been there, just like any parent who has a child participating in athletics. We can spend our time fantasizing or accepting reality. So we spin our dreams.
We escape into movies, books, sports, music, and television to give ourselves pleasure, of course. But they are also venues that engage our creative impulse to escape from the grind of our day-to-day rituals.
Many people are disillusioned these days. I would submit a large part of that is because their fantasy world doesn’t fit their reality. They imagine the way they want things to be, and when the pre-conditioned and unrealistic vision is not realized, they grow frustrated.
It is easy to see this, but much harder to rectify. And we all fall prey to the impulse.
For what it’s worth, my two cents is to exercise control over those things in life you can do something about. Put in the extra effort. Help your kids. Recognize many things won’t turn out “your” way.
If that still doesn’t work out, then let your fantasies run wild.
Part of the reason we don’t dwell in reality is because work dwells there. That takes up a huge chunk of time during each day. It tires us out, stresses certain people, and puts many in a frame of mind to escape.
This makes fertile ground for the businesses that cater to fantasy, which can be defined way more broadly you might think. Most of us would say a fantasy is about something we hope makes us happy, but the odds are against it. We fantasize, making ourselves feel better, getting pleasure from something that will never occur.
But fantasies go deeper than that. Any time we are delving into something that triggers the happiness sensors and sends images and thoughts to our brains can be considered a fantasy. We’re thinking about something and it’s not specifically the activity we are engaged in. So we are fantasizing.
If you accept that definition, we work to escape. Yes, we commute to our jobs, put in our time, have our moments of joy and accomplishment, and stay focused for extended periods of time, but we are also thinking about what we will have for lunch, taking the dogs for an enjoyable walk or the book we want to read when we get home. Those are our daydreams in the 8-5 world.
Take the boring meeting, for example. Are you fantasizing in there? Do you enter the room with a razor focus to listen intently to everything said, provide spectacular input and field questions ? Or do you fade away, watching the speaker’s lips flap while you stifle a yawn and relive that fishing trip you took when you were 12?
We also pretend about things going on right in front of our faces. We choose not to face what is really going on.
An example of this is parents who watch their kids participate in athletics. If your son plays baseball and only nine get on the field at one time, then players 10-16 on the roster have been deemed substitutes and are less likely to see action.
Though that is a coach’s decision and we can all disagree with coaches (witness TV sports shows, and talking sports heads on radio), at some point parents have to recognize their kid plays at a certain level that either gets him or her on the field or continuing to ride the bench. You can keep pretending he is better than some other player, but usually if you ask around and face reality, the kid who is playing ahead of him is better.
It’s hard. I know, I’ve been there, just like any parent who has a child participating in athletics. We can spend our time fantasizing or accepting reality. So we spin our dreams.
We escape into movies, books, sports, music, and television to give ourselves pleasure, of course. But they are also venues that engage our creative impulse to escape from the grind of our day-to-day rituals.
Many people are disillusioned these days. I would submit a large part of that is because their fantasy world doesn’t fit their reality. They imagine the way they want things to be, and when the pre-conditioned and unrealistic vision is not realized, they grow frustrated.
It is easy to see this, but much harder to rectify. And we all fall prey to the impulse.
For what it’s worth, my two cents is to exercise control over those things in life you can do something about. Put in the extra effort. Help your kids. Recognize many things won’t turn out “your” way.
If that still doesn’t work out, then let your fantasies run wild.
