The Daydream (Part One)
(Or) the Endangered Soul Transmission
I’m experiencing lurid flashbacks of the housetraining years.
You know the ones. Those years spent domesticating the child to be ready for civilisation. The taming of its innate wildness, the pruning and paring back of its awkward ill-fitting edges. We are told early on which parts of us are acceptable, desirable, worth enhancing or shrinking down. Only to then discover a substantial load of our lifetime’s remaining energy is consumed in reuniting these exiled parts – in learning how to welcome them back home, with all the confusion, grief, estranged joy and emotional free-falling it entails.
Perhaps it’s an unavoidable part of the human trajectory. The law might go along such lines: that we must first learn – however clumsily, maladaptively, or wrongly – in order to unlearn. We must discover what doesn’t work for us before we discover what does. We must first conceal ourselves in order to reveal. Fragmentation before integration and so on.
Or maybe not.
Maybe there’s a way to save some time and avoid all of this. But you and I and many others are still working on that.
Either way it’s common enough as to appear inevitable. Not so long after standing upright, finding our balance and learning to walk relatively unassisted, the feedback begins. Through any number of ways we are told which of our quirks and qualities will serve us and which will hinder. Our caregivers and guides are usually well-meaning enough. The majority are doing all they can, with their best guesswork, to give us advantages early on and ensure our belonging-stroke-success in society.
The only problem is that few of us – if any – are made to fit in. We’re made to stand out. This is how we belong. Not by blending in but by clearly marking our territory. Not exactly like a dog does. But more by proclaiming to the world – “This is the creature I am, this is my calling, and this is the role I’ve chosen to honour.”
We’re not made to succeed according to the prescription of a society that is evidently unwell and in need of resuscitation. The only definition of success can be the one we determine for ourselves. And at some point along the trajectory we wake up to all of this, for our souls can no longer abide the discrepancies in our self-expressions.
We turn around to realise that our guides, whoever they might have been, were just the grown-up versions of once-upon-a-time children themselves. Children who had also been raised in a society which taught them that there were certain ways to behave and not to behave in order to survive, to be considered valuable and worthy of love. Consciously, semi-consciously, or otherwise, they were just passing on the same lessons that were handed down the branches of the family tree.
I say this because I want to make it clear that I’m not playing the blame game. I’m not here to describe a conspiracy set against us from an early age. Growing up consists of these fine-tunings, tweaks, mouldings and censorships. There’s a practical logic behind many of the instructions we receive. It makes sense that we’re not allowed to leave the table until we finish our greens; that every strategy under the sun is employed to silence us when we’re wailing on an aeroplane; that we’re told off for pushing other children in the playground; or that we’re taken to the headmaster’s office for peeing in a plant-pot.
Yes, we must eat a balanced diet for our health. Where we are hushed on the plane it’s only to protect us from the mutinous wrath of the mob we are stuck onboard with. As for violence, it can’t be left unchecked. And there are correct and incorrect places to pee, apparently, in civilised society (although, I can’t help but defend this little boy, who, desperate to void his bladder but having been denied permission to leave class, chose the second best alternative).
Sadly, as helpful as these instructions might prove in making us functioning members of society, there’s a heavy price to pay. Namely that, in the constant bombardment of modifications our self-presentations ought to take, an unspoken message is implied: that the whole of who we are is intolerable. There are parts of us that simply won’t do. It’s as if they had accidentally entered in with us and must be banished as soon as possible. Not just for the sake of ourselves, but for everyone else.
Only, we all know by now, there’s no such thing as banishing any part of us. All of our parts live on. Whether in the light of our awareness or in the shadows of our denial, they live on. And far from being the functioning member of society we pretend to be, we often know ourselves, behind closed doors and mask-slips, as dysfunctional creatures.
The secret so common as to be unsecret.
Which brings us to … Civilisation Training
Our first and earliest encounters with ‘civilisation-training’ are met with innocence and bewilderment. We don’t really understand why we must modify in order to survive but trust we must; the adults know more than us. They have lived here longer. Drawn the maps. Collected the scars. We are touching this world for the first time but they’ve been around the block. Surely, if anyone has figured out the best rules for making it through alive – it’s them.
What else are we to do? We’ve not yet acquired enough experience to appreciate the wisdom we ourselves have brought into the world. Neither do we appreciate just how intimately connected to our soul’s sincerest desires and purposes we are. For better or worse, we need the guidance of the adults around us and their strange ways of behaving.
I recall one of my earliest run-ins with civilisation training in school:
As a schoolboy, I would fill out the back pages of my exercise books with drawings. As my illustrations grew they steadily migrated towards the front of the book at a pace my schoolwork couldn’t match. In some cases – especially if I was particularly allergic to the class’s subject – my artistic output would be so prolific that my books ended up dominated by more drawings than schoolwork.
This, according to the school, was not the proper use of this paper. As lovely as my doodles were, they were a wilful squandering of official school property. My teacher was only doing her job, of course, when she told me that I would have to desist from drawing in the classroom. Perhaps my parents could invest in some paper and I carry on with my “hobby” in my own time. Whatever the case, from now on, I could only fill my exercise books with the so-called “proper work.”
I was confused. It seemed my teacher and the powers that be didn’t quite get it. This was never just a “hobby” for me. To name it so was to cheapen it. This was an expression of my inner mystery, an outpouring of an imagination that knew neither law nor limitation. Drawing set my body at its highest decibel of aliveness. It consumed me entirely. This was never a hobby. This was my proper work.
“Sure, let the other students follow the prescribed subject if it suit them. I’ve no qualms with that. But please understand that I’ve already found my subject. Now, kindly, leave me alone to it.”
Okay, I might not be quoting exactly verbatim here. I’m not sure I was ever so confident. Certainly I wasn’t so proud or naïve as to not understand where they were coming from. I could appreciate the necessity of learning Maths, Science, English, or whatever else the hour was intended for. These were crucial to give me the best footing in life starting out. I’d been told enough times.
Yet I still couldn’t help but feel a terrible exasperation. Why couldn’t I just do the thing I was already good at? Why couldn’t I use my own time for what I felt called to? Would that not just be a better use of it? Could it not just be that simple?
Already, I had perceived a flaw in the way of things. An early discord with the system that foreshadowed our future relationship’s disharmony. Why were my hours being timetabled? Why was I having to learn subjects that somebody else had decided were for my own good? When did I ever get any say in the matter? Had anyone thought to ask?
Was my voice even listened to? And when someone did lend an ear was it only to humour me? Would people continue to listen to my designs for life with warm-hearted condescension? Listening but not really taking me seriously. Perhaps even enjoying a nostalgia for their own halcyon days of youth – where they too hadn’t learnt there was a limit to what was possible.
Don’t get me wrong. I understood there were many things out there I’d need help with. But I was still the person with the firsthand experience of being me. Surely, even with only a handful of years to my name – as the only one of me – that should have given me some credibility, some authority.
Anyway, truth be told, I didn’t let it stop me drawing, whether inside or outside of the classroom. Still, the whole incident made me aware, for the first time, that there were forces out there, even with the best of intentions, that would seek to have my natural expression compromised to fit into society’s larger plan. They would have me bend to suit the curriculum rather than the curriculum bend for me.
The swift operation of the curriculum was imperative and anything that might sabotage it was viewed with suspicion. The incident with my drawings granted me the eyes to see how other (so-called) mismanagements of time were being discouraged or outright shut down. And the largest waste of time – that routinely scuppered the successful delivery of education – was something every child was infected with: the condition of daydreaming.
Daydreaming as a Condition
It made perfect sense why in the years-long task of educating, ensuring students’ attentions were not diverted was of primary importance. Otherwise how would the fruits of the curriculum firmly root into their cerebellums? The task of training one’s attention on a single focal point was commendable preparation for life. Especially now, when our attention is harvested left, right and centre, with increasingly sophisticated methods of mass distraction.
Daydreaming then, viewed as an undisciplined use of attention, was a target of the school system. Children learned that getting lost in their mind-streams or entering into their fantasies was a form of misbehaviour. We all know that moment where the teacher rounded on a student, – perhaps having noticed the vacant look in their eyes, which often accompanied the child as they slipped into the imaginal realm – suddenly shouting out their name.
The student jumped out of their skin, much to the amusement of their peers, and struggled to repeat what their teacher had just said. Satisifed, the teacher smiled, as if proving their point. The hot-cheeked child would then suffer her giggling classmates. Humiliation hammered home the crucial point: you do your idle fantasising and purposeless daydreaming on your own time. Not on school’s time.
That’s the rub of it right there. What the school system deemed a pointless or wasted application of the imagination it simply didn’t abide. Otherwise it made good use of the faculty. It recognised our ability to imagine as a tool-beyond-compare when it came to education. We used it to learn scientific theories, comprehend texts, memorise numbers and enter into maths problems.
“If Farmer Jacob counts eleven sheep before he goes to bed and two are taken by wolves overnight, then how many does he have left when he wakes in the morning?”
Then there are timetabled instances where the creative power of the imagination was obviously encouraged. Places where it was allowed to run wild. Our arts and crafts classes, our reading and writing lessons, our scheduled break-times in the playground. These were the allocated chunks in the day where it was permitted to more deeply enter into the imagination.
Otherwise, an imagination without boundaries – one that didn’t care for the day’s schedule – was a disruption. Imagination without obvious cause, without a harness or some predefined outcome, was a thing to be gotten past, moved around or quashed to a minimum.
We might have even been called absent-minded for our daydreaming. Even though it is quite the opposite condition: we are fully-minded. Perhaps too fully-minded to attend to the physical task at hand but never absent of mind. On the contrary, we are straddling two dimensions at once – the physical and the psychical, the tangible and the imaginary, the waking counterpart and the omnipresent dreamworld.
Our struggles to concentrate, at times, can stem from this fact of existence. That we are each endowed with a proliferation of images that continue, largely unimpeded, in the flow of the mind-stream.
A case has been made that our sensorium have more than enough stimulation in the constant stream of life out there, in the waking world, that daydreaming takes us out of the moment. It becomes a distraction, an escape route, a persistent thief of our presence.
Meditators are often taught by this same line of thinking.
The lead instruction is to return one’s attention back to the present moment. Mind-wanderings aren’t exactly vilified as such – for making an enemy of our innumerable wanderings is counterproductive – but neither are they granted much utility. They are viewed as the side-effects of a monkey mind: an unfortunate live-in situation, a quirk of nature that we must somehow work around.
Instead, the outer present-reality of our waking world is afforded prime importance. Even though the imagination and mental machinations also belong to this conscious experience, they are subtly downplayed as deceptive. Somehow not to be trusted or worth listening to.
There are very good reasons for not spending all our time with “our head in the clouds”, but it occurs to me that daydreams have earned an unfair reputation. One that doesn’t recognise their inherent value as transmissions from the imaginal realm. Is it not part of the privilege of existing as a conscious, sentient being - to be flooded with an unabating current of ideas, images and information?
It’s my view that we should honour this condition of existence. This condition of daydreaming.
And that’s precisely what I’ll be speaking for in my next blog post on the subject.
Coming very soon.
"This is the creature I am!" Beautiful, Josh.