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Your Daydreams Are Where Your Magic Lies
“I try to maintin a healthy dose of daydreaming to remain sane.”
- Florence Welch
I described the visual meditation technique I used when I wrote about my emergency room visit in South Korea for a kidney infection.
I imagine I’m elsewhere; the Silverlake Reservoir in Los Angeles to be exact. I picture the sway of the trees, the ripples in the water as the wind crosses over it, and the sandy path that my shoes beat down on.
Call it what you want, but it really is just daydreaming masked as meditation. I’m imagining being somewhere else so vividly that it feels like I’m actually there; to evoke other emotions my current circumstances can’t.
As kids, daydreaming was condemned. Our attention floating off into another world resulted in a firm scolding for our teachers. “Get your head out of the clouds!” If we couldn’t pay attention, we were acting wrong.
But is daydreaming actually wrong? Is dreaming up ideas that don’t yet exist or imagining a different future for ourselves something to frown upon?
I’m here to argue that the notion of daydreaming as being for the weakminded is actually far from the case. I believe daydreaming is where our magic lies; it produces thoughts and ideas that our consciousness just can’t muster up in our daily routines.
