What are Daydreams?

by Hanna

(View out my window at sunrise.)

It seems to me that daydreams are possibilities. They are ways of contemplating how the future might look. Most daydreams go off into realms of great improbability, but if I’m careful it’s possible to look down on my own daydream from above and to keep it somewhat within reason. I like to think that when I can do that my daydream becomes a better simulation of what really is possible. . . but it’s still just a simulation.

In the end, daydreaming is just a way of exploring narratives for myself. And it’s impossible to live without narratives, without stories.

People can’t live by natural laws alone, can they? We live among people, not among inanimate objects. Almost without intending to, we draw lines of causality from one event in our lives to the next. And those events are usually meetings and interactions with other people, not with things we can analyse objectively.

Just as I search for a narrative to explain my experiences, so I assume do the other people involved. Considering our different circumstances, my story is probably very different from those of other people. That idea makes me smile as I try to imagine all the different people I am in other people’s narratives. Who am I in your daydreams?

Past experiences inform how we imagine the future, but the imagined future is always different than the imagined past. The future is always changing as daydreams shift to account for different events, different causes and effects, different possibilities. The past seems to change in a similar way, too. At least I can say that my stories about the past mutate slowly with time as my perspective changes.

No matter how analytical people want to be of the world, we will always need stories. . . and daydreams.

. . . and music to daydream by:


About these ads