The brain cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality. – Amazing Facts
Our imagination can make our heart beat faster, memories can feel like it is happening right now, not something in the long ago past. We can remember things and our brain can have our body respond like we are going through it all over again. It does not have to be negative. It can be a positive memory. In fact, we can dream and waken feeling like we have just been through something real. Our brain can dredge up reality or fantasy and we drag that along into our today. In a moment we can relive our old life and many of us forget that what once was, is no more. Adulting is not for sissies, they say, and sometimes reality can be pretty harsh. Sometimes we forget to be children and let our imagination carry us into wonderous places our imagination once took us. We can get some of that when we read a good story and we move into that story as we read. But do we ever lay down in the grass and let the clouds tell us stories? We need some of that to release the pressures of every day life betimes.
Don’t you wish, sometimes, that you can throw a fit, fall in it, lay on the floor and kick and scream with no set reasons for it, just for doing it? No, adults do not do such, they say. Sometimes we just wish to be able to sit in a puddle of misery for no seeming reason at all, just the release of whining and complaining and feeling downright miserable because, for a moment, we just feel downright miserable. We ought to be able to do that, shouldn’t we? We should be able to love hard, play hard, even in the dreariest of times without responsibilities or expectations that we should be more adult than that. Sometimes we do not want to put away our toys. Sometimes we forget that imagination can relieve us of adulting and we forget to run along mountain streams, collecting rocks and sticks and believing in magic.
We forget about the wonder of gnomes and fairies and elves and ogres. We forget to explore and to solve mysteries. We can become jaded. Sometimes we know too much.
Once the world was more mysterious. Once we did not have the scientific facts. Once we believed in monsters in the closet and under our bed. Once we did not know why the moon rose and set, why there were eclipses, how to explain everything in rational, logical, knowing. We could blame missing things on being taken by fairies, or gnomes, and we could wish upon stars, and hope to find the end of the rainbow.
Don’t forget to ‘UN-adult’ once in a while. No, you do not have to go kicking and screaming from the store because you cannot have ‘everything’. But, we do need to, once in a while, move into the fantasy, in some way, to relieve ourselves of the pressures of having to ‘do it all’ all the time. Do read that fantasy story, watch that fantasy movie, daydream, go out into nature and commune with fairies and gnomes, good witches, and have that good cry. Trick your brain, betimes, into thinking all can be healed with a kiss and some ‘knightess’ can ride in and save you. Imagination can carry us away for brief respite whether it is when you are creating a painting, writing a story, dreaming a new good dream, or whatever it takes to let the imagination run free and carefree and once again, enter the fantasy of life being easier than it sometimes can be. Let a bit of fantasy in once in a while.
©Carol Desjarlais 10.08.20
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