When it comes to my daydreams, I always find it easier to dwell in the context than in the content. So for my sake we’ll take it slow. We’ll get to know each other a bit before the clothes come off.
As a child I was wild, energetic, and loudly opinionated. I was a pretty happy kid, despite feeling rather disenfranchised by grown-ups and their rules. I loved to play imagination games, as most kids do.
When I was old enough, I loved story books. I memorized folk tales and fairy tales easily, recounting them to anyone who would listen while adding my own embellishments. Once for a school project, I had the class sit in a circle while I told several Zulu folk stories. At a couple of different summer camps, somehow my cabin got in the habit of listening to me tell a bedtime story before bed. I liked fiction, too, but myths were different. I could read a novel and soon forget what it was about. Myths, on the other hand, were unforgettable. I had a blast learning about Greek mythology in sixth grade. I once got so loud and excited during an activity that my exasperated teacher said, “Hope, if you were a Greek goddess your name would be Megaphonia!” I’m not sure why I always remembered that. Maybe I liked the idea of belonging to the pantheon.
My favorite subjects in school were philosophy, history, and languages. I loved Big Questions like, “how did we get here?”, “is someone watching over us?”, or “what is my purpose?” I liked church, too, mainly for the sermons. My mom says that she always thought I might have grown up to be a priest.
I had a loving family and a privileged upbringing. Nevertheless, growing up is hard. We all have different ways of handling it. Apparently I chose shame.
As a pre-teen and teen, I became painfully insecure. I stopped telling folk stories, and I became much more interested in being “good”, “pretty”, and above all, “normal”. I was afraid of everything that made me special. I tried to watch what I thought everybody else was watching, to eat what I thought everybody else was eating, to love what I thought everybody else was loving. Any desires of my own felt like needs, and needs were a sign of weakness.
Around the age that I began to feel ashamed of having wants and needs, I began daydreaming with gusto. My imagination picked up bits and pieces of novels and TV shows like a sticky Katamari ball. Names attached to faces and places. Characters and moments coalesced into little episodes. It’s sort of like getting a song stuck in your head. I went about my business, and my imaginary friends went about theirs. I snatched what fantasies I could during solitary moments—walking the dog, doing the dishes, waiting in line. Daydreaming was a guilty pleasure. It was like having a TV in my head, and the best part was that no one could ever pop in and see what I was watching.
It never occurred to me that I was creating my own myths. That my daydreams were not just the random flotsam of neural activity, but a complex mixture of personal desires, cultural memories, and Big Questions. Daydreams, like myths, were unforgettable. Novels introduced me to new worlds, but myths and daydreams stirred in me things that were already there. That’s why I couldn’t forget them. I was not so much learning stories as I was recognizing parts of myself. The story of Pegasus stirred something that was stirred again by the flying mounts in WoW (it’s a video game), and then I stirred it again and again and again when I daydreamed my immortal hero on his own flying steed.
Different people have different ways of grappling with life’s Big Questions. Some people pray. Some people dance. Some people become political activists. I daydream. Daydreaming is philosophy, a style of inquiry that is every bit as legitimate as “serious” philosophy.
Growing up, for me, meant the flowering of a certain paranoia. I was paranoid about fitting in, about being right and being good. Nevertheless, there was something else there all along that no amount of fear or shame could suppress. It was a certain constellation of images that refused to be ignored. I think the ancient Greeks called this thing psyche. I like to call it soul.