On regulatory fantasies
What is the point of reveries, daydreams and everyday fantasies?
Well, by transporting us to another dimension, namely that one of irreality, we get some breathing room and a cheerful escape from conventional worries and preoccupations in life, which naturally get tiring and exhausting without a safe haven of diversion and recreation.
By imagining ourselves to be someone we are not, we can satisfy the concealed desires and shortcomings of our mere existences. Our contemporary lifestyle is bound to be littered with ups and downs, truths and falsities we tell ourselves, perks and cons, positives and negatives etc. And these tedious facets of our lives are in dire need of at least some variation, to mix things up somewhat.
Indeed, if the only thing we ever do is to pretend like we’re someone else in our mind, it can be a surefire sign of indicating that something’s just not right. There’s stuff to fix and we know it, but we go on with our lousy way of living because it’s comfortable, fixed and predictable. Although we ought not expand our comfort zone too rapidly at that note, we certainly need the gradualist route as an approach to try out something new.
At the same time, reveries are context-dependent: a mindless diversion of imagining yourself to be a Russian heir of your oligarch father’s business empire while waiting in traffic is completely natural (maybe not that daydream in particular, but oh well) and healthy, should we believe the science on this.
Daydreams can be a way of satisfying needs that temporarily are left unfulfilled, like social attention (filmstar fame), acceptance (popularity among your peers), belonging (being a successfully integrated part of a community) sex or passion (tragic creative artist, virtuoso pianist).
In any case, as long as they don’t get overhand, regulatory fantasies remain a manner in which to cope with the less propitious aspects of our daily lives, and that’s all fine and dandy. I hope it can prove to be a way of exploring where your true interests lie and what gaps you need to fill in your actual life, whether it be anyhing from self-management and being part of something larger and more purposeful than yourself to social success.
To hammer in an aforementioned point further: by stepping outside of the narrow zone of activities that you find pleasurable and unproblematic and into a wider array of initially uncomfortable, perhaps awkward and challenging ventures, you come to gradually expand your power, confidence, set of abilities and experience. Your life, unsurprisingly, gets all the more fascinating when you actually go live it by making mistakes aplenty by trying out new hobbies, going to public social arrangements, joining an organization and a myriad of other possibilities.
Treat it like a game where you level up your character in terms of social traits, capabilities and whatnot and you’ll see it improve over time, growing ever more steadfast and secure in its place of projecting autonomous power and self-esteem.
In the worst case, something wasn’t to your liking. Conversely, you can find and develop life-long pursuits. By nourishing your integral talents, personality traits and capacities you become more than what you are: you turn into who you really are.
