What is the biggest dream you've had? Do you make dreams a focal point of your life planning? This weekend, I heard an anthropologist speak about our western mindsets, with several marketing strategies which target the dreaming nature of people. I began to wonder if dreaming wasn't a necessary energy - an adaptive internal propeller that took people forward in the hopes of good things.
Differentiating between fantasy and dreaming
There is, in my mind an important distinction between things that a person fancies him or herself having, regardless of there being any basis in reality for the outcome and things that a person dreams up as foci for their life. Why is this important? I think that both fantasy and dreaming are important as independent self-aids for people, but I think that perhaps we could, as people, allow a little more of each in our lives.
I am a compulsive planner by nature. I have been known to make a comprehensive ten year plan when it comes to education, geography and relational position. This is a more historical trait than a current one (we hope), mostly because I took it to a compulsive place. I could become overly rigid in my planning and take on a life frame of performance rather than the kind of organic functioning where beautiful and perfect mistakes are possible. This is a lesson I am still learning, but there is some benefit to the other side of this behaviour. My 10 year plan with all its perfectly orchestrated segues and pauses represented, in a very clinical way, my dreaming. I dreamt of a different experience and an education and I proceeded with the steps of my plan that took me to England. Eventually, I walked the years off of my plan and was arranging to move to Texas, adding new goals and years on the other side of the plan. If I followed the steps then year after year I'd walk closer to my dream job, my dream husband, my dream home and then my dream family unit.
My question became this - what about my steps? I had enough insight into my compulsion to know that I was having to sift through the planning, which admittedly excited me (just think of it - efficient, seamless transitions from undergrad to grad and then the job? From "focusing on my career right now" to "married" in the span of five years?), to find and label the dreams. Is it the gradschool I get in to this year or is it the tenured faculty position I get at my first choice University in ten years, or is it the papers I publish with internationally renowned researchers, the books I write, the critic acclamations I receive for my award-winning blog that are my dreams? Is it any of those things? I found the idea, in a moment of hyper-analysis, to be tiresome. It meant that nothing was ever really achieved that would satisfy. If a dream is the most desirable outcome, the ideal, then shouldn't it be enough?
This is the point where I understood two things. The first thing was this - without the little dreams, I would be unable to power through my life. I like to create structure in my flexible world - I don't like a rigid world, but one where I can impose my own personal rigidity. A prison becomes a house when you hold the keys and choose who will have free entry and exit. When I wake up in the morning I can say that today I am working toward things X,Y & Z; I am dreaming when I create a new target for myself and it is another reason to get out of bed. This, for me, takes care of the futility because where I initially asked what was the point if you never stop dreaming, I came to understand that each new goal is a propeller to life. The pursuit of dreams became functional even as it maintained its abstract frame. The second thing was in that other practice - that of fantasising. This is not the most natural thing for me. On the personality inventory NEO-PI-R, my score on fantasy was 0 and my friends laughed endlessly about this. When asked to relate a fantasy of mine in a psychological exercise I was doing once, the leading psychologist told me he'd like to work individually with me, because my fantasy was just so bad.
I can laugh about this now because I believe that over the years I have understood an important fact. Another reason why it is ok that people will spend their whole life dreaming, receiving or not receiving and re-dreaming is because of two things. The first thing is that fantasy is our instant gratification - today I can think about what it would be like to shape the minds of hundreds of students over a year; what it would be like to revolutionise Trinidadian corporate structure; what my children will look like, or my first home. In a world where you and I have to work hard every day to get closer to the little goals that will soon become achieved and forgotten, fantasy is the relief. There is no prerequisite of practicality in fantasy, you may begin with the most outlandish, physically difficult and abstract scenario and extrapolate endlessly to your heart's content. There's a bible quote that says "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life". I like this because it introduces my little theory, that the fantasy is an important tool for us humans. As we toil through our lives we should take a minute not only to dream up a plan, but also to fantasise about what we might want to even dream about. Not everything that we plan for, that we set ourselves up to have in life will come to fruition, and this can be painful, especially when we consider our own investment in the dreaming.
The good news is that fantasy is our means back into hope. I am not talking about anything too complicated or grossly abstract, but just simply the introduction of "Would it make me happy if...?" type questions. How often do you ask yourself "If I had all the money in the world and a global passport, where would I go and what would I do?" If you can take the time to consider what would make you happy, even delving into the impossible briefly, often times you can harvest something real and pursuit-worthy. So, I guess my system would look something like this if I had one:
Fantasy is greater than dream because fantasy is not limited to include only absolute truths - not even about what the fantasising party truly wants, but is rather, an avenue of escapism where they might see their longing fulfilled today. It is also bigger than dream because it may be the fantasiser's first encounter with their desire for a particular pursuit. The dream is greater than function because all things hoped for are not necessarily attained. Function is applied dreaming. The dream is the area where the person takes ownership of their goals and says "this is what I want, what I'm hoping for" and concentrates that in their functioning. I think that life can be reduced to the least value on the left of the equal sign because it is the easiest thing to do; simply function. Orders are distributed from one's dreaming or the dreams of someone else.
I think it takes a great amount of courage to pursue one's dreams that might fail and it takes an extraordinary person to allow the vulnerability of fantasy where he or she must explore a new idea and a completely novel environment where the product is their sole responsibility. It is probably true that without dreams, there would be nothing to fail at, but I believe that if you do not create your own dreams that you function under the dreams derived from someone else's fantasy. Personally, I'd like to know that I run through the veins of everything I set out to do in life, that when I see the products of my hand, I see the dreams behind them, and I know that they are in fact, mine.
Differentiating between fantasy and dreaming
There is, in my mind an important distinction between things that a person fancies him or herself having, regardless of there being any basis in reality for the outcome and things that a person dreams up as foci for their life. Why is this important? I think that both fantasy and dreaming are important as independent self-aids for people, but I think that perhaps we could, as people, allow a little more of each in our lives.
I am a compulsive planner by nature. I have been known to make a comprehensive ten year plan when it comes to education, geography and relational position. This is a more historical trait than a current one (we hope), mostly because I took it to a compulsive place. I could become overly rigid in my planning and take on a life frame of performance rather than the kind of organic functioning where beautiful and perfect mistakes are possible. This is a lesson I am still learning, but there is some benefit to the other side of this behaviour. My 10 year plan with all its perfectly orchestrated segues and pauses represented, in a very clinical way, my dreaming. I dreamt of a different experience and an education and I proceeded with the steps of my plan that took me to England. Eventually, I walked the years off of my plan and was arranging to move to Texas, adding new goals and years on the other side of the plan. If I followed the steps then year after year I'd walk closer to my dream job, my dream husband, my dream home and then my dream family unit.
My question became this - what about my steps? I had enough insight into my compulsion to know that I was having to sift through the planning, which admittedly excited me (just think of it - efficient, seamless transitions from undergrad to grad and then the job? From "focusing on my career right now" to "married" in the span of five years?), to find and label the dreams. Is it the gradschool I get in to this year or is it the tenured faculty position I get at my first choice University in ten years, or is it the papers I publish with internationally renowned researchers, the books I write, the critic acclamations I receive for my award-winning blog that are my dreams? Is it any of those things? I found the idea, in a moment of hyper-analysis, to be tiresome. It meant that nothing was ever really achieved that would satisfy. If a dream is the most desirable outcome, the ideal, then shouldn't it be enough?
This is the point where I understood two things. The first thing was this - without the little dreams, I would be unable to power through my life. I like to create structure in my flexible world - I don't like a rigid world, but one where I can impose my own personal rigidity. A prison becomes a house when you hold the keys and choose who will have free entry and exit. When I wake up in the morning I can say that today I am working toward things X,Y & Z; I am dreaming when I create a new target for myself and it is another reason to get out of bed. This, for me, takes care of the futility because where I initially asked what was the point if you never stop dreaming, I came to understand that each new goal is a propeller to life. The pursuit of dreams became functional even as it maintained its abstract frame. The second thing was in that other practice - that of fantasising. This is not the most natural thing for me. On the personality inventory NEO-PI-R, my score on fantasy was 0 and my friends laughed endlessly about this. When asked to relate a fantasy of mine in a psychological exercise I was doing once, the leading psychologist told me he'd like to work individually with me, because my fantasy was just so bad.
I can laugh about this now because I believe that over the years I have understood an important fact. Another reason why it is ok that people will spend their whole life dreaming, receiving or not receiving and re-dreaming is because of two things. The first thing is that fantasy is our instant gratification - today I can think about what it would be like to shape the minds of hundreds of students over a year; what it would be like to revolutionise Trinidadian corporate structure; what my children will look like, or my first home. In a world where you and I have to work hard every day to get closer to the little goals that will soon become achieved and forgotten, fantasy is the relief. There is no prerequisite of practicality in fantasy, you may begin with the most outlandish, physically difficult and abstract scenario and extrapolate endlessly to your heart's content. There's a bible quote that says "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life". I like this because it introduces my little theory, that the fantasy is an important tool for us humans. As we toil through our lives we should take a minute not only to dream up a plan, but also to fantasise about what we might want to even dream about. Not everything that we plan for, that we set ourselves up to have in life will come to fruition, and this can be painful, especially when we consider our own investment in the dreaming.
The good news is that fantasy is our means back into hope. I am not talking about anything too complicated or grossly abstract, but just simply the introduction of "Would it make me happy if...?" type questions. How often do you ask yourself "If I had all the money in the world and a global passport, where would I go and what would I do?" If you can take the time to consider what would make you happy, even delving into the impossible briefly, often times you can harvest something real and pursuit-worthy. So, I guess my system would look something like this if I had one:
Fantasy > Dream > Function = LIFE
Fantasy is greater than dream because fantasy is not limited to include only absolute truths - not even about what the fantasising party truly wants, but is rather, an avenue of escapism where they might see their longing fulfilled today. It is also bigger than dream because it may be the fantasiser's first encounter with their desire for a particular pursuit. The dream is greater than function because all things hoped for are not necessarily attained. Function is applied dreaming. The dream is the area where the person takes ownership of their goals and says "this is what I want, what I'm hoping for" and concentrates that in their functioning. I think that life can be reduced to the least value on the left of the equal sign because it is the easiest thing to do; simply function. Orders are distributed from one's dreaming or the dreams of someone else.
I think it takes a great amount of courage to pursue one's dreams that might fail and it takes an extraordinary person to allow the vulnerability of fantasy where he or she must explore a new idea and a completely novel environment where the product is their sole responsibility. It is probably true that without dreams, there would be nothing to fail at, but I believe that if you do not create your own dreams that you function under the dreams derived from someone else's fantasy. Personally, I'd like to know that I run through the veins of everything I set out to do in life, that when I see the products of my hand, I see the dreams behind them, and I know that they are in fact, mine.
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