Dashing through the skies, you laugh as you, Harry Potter, Hermione and Ron fly around Hogwarts on your broom. Suddenly, it all disappears. You look up and see everybody staring at you. The teacher had picked on you and you had been daydreaming - again. Daydreaming - we all do it. They differ from person to person because we are all unique. It serves a form of self-indulgence, a type of wish fulfilment when we are bored, stressed or tired. Daydreaming is a way for us to escape reality into a land where it is all about us. Lewis Caroll said that "Imagination is the only weapon against the war of reality".
People who daydream frequently are shown to be less satisfied with their lives. However, studies show that we get more satisfaction by daydreaming about family and friends. Daydreaming is a great form of exercise for the brain and even increases its productivity. Similar to dreaming during the night, learning helps to consolidate learning and sort through problems; basically, it makes us more successful. It is an essential cognitive tool for us to explore our inner experiences. Sadly, we daydream less as we get older as daydreaming helps us anticipate our future. For every birthday we celebrate our future shrinks.
Daydreaming is a method of helping somebody get more comfortable with an idea. The more the person daydreams about something, the more acquainted we become. Like doctors practising a vital surgery, daydreaming is a rehearsal for our lives. Practice makes perfect or rather makes us better.
Yet, in the 1950s, some education psychologists warned parents to not allow their children as it could suck them into neurosis or even psychosis - where an individual loses complete touch with reality. One can become addicted to daydreaming. By imagining a perfect world, the best version of ourselves or the perfect outcome to a situation can be dangerous, you could get concentration and procrastination problems as we begin to analyse our past and worry about our wrong decisions in the future. Live in the moment instead of dwelling in the past or worrying about your future.
People in prison or workers with a "boring" job daydream a lot. Being a student at times can also be the problem. Dreaming about characters in our favourite anime or manga seems better than listening to our history teacher droning on about the Norman conquest. Except, we regret this on the day before we have a test on the William I. Daydreaming actually helps you improve your memory if you daydream about something close to reality. So next time you are revising history, daydreaming about fighting in the Battle of Hastings and you might just ace that history test.
