जो ख़्वाहिशें हक़ीक़त में न हाँसिल हों
क्यों न उनको ख्वाबोंमें जिया जाये
Desires that cannot be fulfilled in reality
Why not live them in dreams
This verse was born in Hindi/Urdu on my morning walk today. I can tell you the precise time it was born but what would be the point of that? (Since I may have piqued your curiosity, it was born at 6.38 a.m.)
As a lifelong admirer and advocate of daydreaming, I have lived considerably in that realm. I regard daydreaming as real as what the world calls real in so much as its main consequence is genuinely experienced joy for a few moments.
My logic is that while the goings-on in my daydreams may not be real in the popularly conceived meaning of real, their result is a truly felt joyous experience in real life. And in any case, how do we know that what we call real is not our collective dream from which we never really emerge?
It is best not to distinguish between reality and daydream for a limited period of time. I say limited because unfortunately our base reality does dominate our existence where you have to pay bills and fart from time to time. I grant I have bookended reality strangely between paying bills and farting, but you get my drift.
The most remarkable feature of daydreaming is that it can be as fantastical as your imagination would allow. It is free of any value judgment. You do not have to explain the events in your daydreams to anyone at all. You do not have to mitigate your indiscretions or offer extenuation for your transgressions. Daydreaming costs nothing other than a few billion neurons in your brain. But then you do not have to earn those neurons because they are already in your brain.
I am aware that many in the “real” world consider daydreaming foolish as if what is unfolding in real life all the time is not foolish enough.
I am reasonably convinced as a lifelong daydreamer that in the end there is next to no difference between what is real and what is not. For instance, the other morning as I looked at the resplendent full moon, I could not tell whether I was imagining it, or it was indeed there. Even our so-called objective collective conclusions about the universe flow from our subjective intelligence.
It is a wonderful thing to daydream as frequently as you like. For instance, when I get a hospital bill that is unmanageably big, I daydream that it is the hospital that owes me, and I intend to forgive them the debt. Foolish? Perhaps, but for those few moments that I daydreamed the fantasy I felt joy. That joy was real at the baser level.
I have built castles in the air and lived in them for a bit. The trick is to be able to toggle between the two realms without getting attached to either.