Sunday Night With John: Daydream Believer

Daydream Believer

John Paul Derryberry 

The proverbial kid, staring out the window of his classroom as he imagines what it would be like to fly like Superman, is the embedded image that shows up for me when daydreaming is mentioned. I was that kid, but it wasn’t Superman whom I dreamed of being. I always wanted to be the Flash, because I was slow. Maybe it was  subconsciously, because my brain was always moving faster than my body could ever hope to go. Or maybe, it was because I was tired of getting my butt kicked by the fast kids in schoolyard races. Even now, there is a moment every day in my life where my brain wanders to what it would be like to be a space traveler, a knight in the middle ages, or to countless other life situations that I will probably never encounter. And, in full disclosure, it’s more like moments because my head has been in the clouds for as long as I can remember. I was never able to fully focus on the task at hand.

Often, conversations others are having around me fade to Peanuts' parents saying wawawawawa.  For the longest time in my life, I thought that I lacked a skill that others possessed. I would enter into a class, a meeting, or a social function and tell myself, do not daydream. Stay focused. I would see well put-together people all taking detailed notes and think, if I just could be that person I would be successful. Then, I would glance down at my notes and see that I had managed to doodle nothing of importance. I’m 35 and still daydreaming most of my day away, and yes, sometimes, I still daydream about being the Flash, because it would be so freaking cool.

As I was listening to a podcast by my favorite author, Chuck Klosterman, he talked about how technology has taken away our daydreaming moments and he is right. Any break in our hectic lives is filled by technology entertaining our brains, instead of allowing our own thoughts to do so. As we stand in line at the bank, we no longer envision what it would be like to just pick up and move to New Orleans. Instead, we scroll through our phones and silently judge people who post weird stuff on Facebook. On a boring Sunday, we no longer lie under the clouds, soak up the sun, and try to describe what the clouds look like. We, instead, immerse ourselves in a Netflix TV series and binge watch somebody else's daydream that turned into a career.

That’s the wonderful thing about daydreaming. It takes us places we can never go in the real world. We think of stuff that hasn’t been invented yet. We test the bounds of science and wonder, can I actually do that? The idea of me being a public speaker and writer started as a daydream and now it’s a reality. Yes, being focused is a skill but so is being imaginative. We don’t have art, music, and love without the daydreamers of the world. Without those things we have very little reason to live and no proof of the existence of our souls. No matter what your age, allow yourself to daydream often. Lose yourself in thoughts of being able to fly, in being able to speak to animals, or into being able to transform into a plane and fly away. It will lead you somewhere good, to an answer about a life problem you are facing. I don’t know the science behind daydreaming but it activates our minds in ways that staying focused can only daydream about. You can count this guy a believer-- a daydream believer.