Daydream believer

Day Dreaming your life a – way…..

There is a theory about daydreaming. Let’s face it there is more than just the one!
My school report card was full of how much of a day dreamer I was in so many of my classes that it was a wonder there was any room left for anything else. Much to my chagrin this would be changed to “must try harder”, but daydreaming is something that you don’t have to try to do.
All of the adults in my life and some of my peers would be very upset with me for not being present while in their presence. It wasn’t as if there was a problem from my point of view, I would just get to a space where the words of the teacher, parent, sibling, friend or whomever would become a drone and life would become very still and quiet because I have a volume control inside my head and it would be slowly but irrevocably turned down to silence…………………..

The premise that I am stating here is that at that time – in days of yore there was no recognition that actually there was something I was good at. Their focus was on their criteria, mine was on my own; it was deemed inappropriate behaviour and ever so slightly arrogant that I should consider myself able to go into the dwam, trance or whatever they wanted to call it. Personally I believe that they were a bit envious of my ability to switch off. That what I was doing was not recognised as a positive is really not surprising – even today teachers are teaching with the same criteria as before and their criteria now has criteria from the Government as to how they should be teaching and what targets they should be reaching. Still they forget that a class of pupils is made of individual people. Some of whom have no idea what it going on as their method of learning is entirely different from the person they are sitting next to.

What happens when the brain is not being stimulated to learn? What happens when the inspirational button is not pushed? What happens when a child is left to flick between channels and not engaged by another human who can stimulate and inspire and motivate?

Look around you, how many children and teenagers and young adults are sitting in front of a box, playing monotonous games of destruction in order to get to a different level.

If we only stimulate one part of the brain then we lose the functional ability of the others. We switch it off. We don’t daydream anymore we go on stand-by.
White noise, the noise when the signal is not tuned in, the brain is constantly looking for a signal and at one point it will get hungry enough to latch onto the first strong signal it finds. So is this why some young people get into the wrong company, take drugs, seek authority figures by accessing a machine, since a machine has been a baby sitter and a trusted one at that; why should they not?

Stand-by on a computer or a television is when the machine is waiting to be fully turned on.

What is it that turns your nearest and dearest on – in respect of the choices they will make?

At what point do we realise the soporific effect of the box in the room whether it be a television or computer? At what point do we realise that time is being stolen from us?

At what point do we sit down and think that we are not day dreaming anymore we are on stand-by, ultimately at the mercy of a remote control?

Day dreaming is a useful tool – ask any creative genius. Einstein was a day dreamer and he dreamed up E=MC2.
Day dreaming can also be re-learned, not taught exactly – too restrictive and in some cases one persons’ day dream is another’s ennui, and it is an entirely personal thing.

Being able to ‘go with the flow’ is something that has even more relevance in the world today. Stress relief. People who are stressed have rarely any kind of good sleep patterns and if we don’t dream we become mentally challenged in different ways; allowing someone to daydream could be the way back to getting a hold on their lives – the Universe is full of such paradoxical games.

Like everything else that we dismiss as unimportant until we understand why we needed it in the first place; the ability and the need to dream is all to easily lost in the white noise of stand-by until we eventually experience burn out.

So get yourself a bit of space and make time to day dream – see where it takes you – write it down afterwards or even record it and read / listen to it again after a couple of days. Notice how you feel directly afterwards. Notice how it felt during and then realise that you were in a trance and then wonder what else you could do in that space, without some Ghengis Khan in twin set and pearls bearing down upon you to bellow in your ear to wake up and pay attention.

New Year New Chaos

Well, here it is all shiny and New Year, happy? Not so much at the moment but things change, that is something that I depend upon at stupid o’clock when I can no longer pretend to sleep.

I’m told that things are ‘for the best’ and that is ‘just how things are’ and yet… in my belief system things are what I make of them. Funnily enough it seems that the only thing I am making at the moment is a right bloody mess of it.

My love of Chaos has come back to haunt me, it resides in my brain, never quiet and on the surface less than totally helpful. Like all things that are interesting (?) it is what is going on beneath the surface that is the important part.

The dreams it throws up (in the minutes I do manage to collapse into sleep), like projectile vomit are vivid, colourful and yes there are references to carrots… I don’t know, it’s an unconscious thing – I’m sure Freud or Jung would have something or other to say about it but my favourite guy has to be Carlos Castaneda, he has such wonderful little homilies to be helping one out with ones daily debacles.

“It is important to do what you don't know how to do. It is important to see your skills as keeping you from learning what is deepest and most mysterious. If you know how to focus, unfocus. If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.”

Interesting thought for the day really, but also it has to do with unravelling. The things that we can do when we unravel things; like on Christmas night – there I was in my cousins house, cheeks almost as red as the wine I was quaffing back quite happily when her daughter came in with a necklace that she had managed to get in a fankle.
It was passed around about four different pairs of hands and was really getting more and more tangled, until finally it came to us.

It looked like an impossible job, but being the helpful souls that we are, the former partner in crime and I, got working on it together. What was helpful was having an idea of what it should look like and what its purpose was outside of the chaotic mess it had become.

It took a bit of manual dexterity and more than a little patience and perseverance but I knew it would not leave our hands until it was fixed and in its original state, and so it was.

So many things that we see in life as chaotic messes could be less so if we only took the time and the patience to see it as it is in its original form and return it to that – or the form we originally intended, a clear and unsullied picture of the outcome we aspire to.

Then again Carlos has another good one for those chaotic things that we get ourselves embroiled within…

"A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use."

I suppose it is time to get the moccasins on and start walking the New Year Path remembering all the time that
“Conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives”

Back to Chaos again!

Goals and aspirations at this time of year are uppermost in our minds. I had few and now I have one less… it is yet to be decided as to whether this path has heart.

So, the last words I will leave, not to Carlos this time but to Robert Frost…

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I…I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

May all your paths have heart and may you walk only far enough to know the difference and no farther, and may you find the one less travelled.

Happy New Year.