Meme-oires 15: Hopes and Dreams
Sep. 21st, 2010 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqI've been avoiding this one for some time as I've had a tough time really deciding what my hopes and dreams are. The biggest problem is that I don't have many of either. What I do have is a lot of fantasies, and those take up most of the mental real estate that should be occupied by hopes and dreams.
So what's the difference? I've thought a little bit about that due to this topic and I think it boils down to how specific the thoughts are and also how likely they are to turn out. Hopes are ephemeral, generic to the point of being ill-defined things.
Dreams are more specific then hopes - the visualization mechanism is starting to shape the hopes into something you could (for example) write a story about. Ideally it is a story that you can make come true.
Fantasies are dreams that have no chance of coming true. This could be because the thought itself is fantastical (i.e. I'm a superhero) or because the boat has already sailed (i.e. I'm married to my childhood sweetheart).
I hope that I'll get a partner some day.
I dream that it's a specific person.
I fantasize that the specific person is Kate Beckinsale.
That example may be TMI.
I don't know how common this is, but I tend to skip part two. I go straight from the hope to the fantasy. This is fine in moderation - there's nothing wrong with what I call lottery-fantasies. You pay your $3 and you day dream about what you're going to do with the money. So long as you're not taking out loans on your future winnings, it's all well and good.
The problem with skipping from dream to fantasy is that dreams are the precursors to action. If I hope to be a success, that's fine. If I fantasize about being rich and famous that's good in moderation, but it's not going to happen if I don't have a dream of becoming an actor. Dreaming about being an actor might prompt me to take acting lessons, or to try out for parts. Dreaming is the visualization stage that prompts one to do something. I can't take "Rich and Famous" classes.
I've trained myself to not to have dreams. Oh, I have lots of generic hopes, and I have a richly detailed fantasy life, but dreams tend to not last long. Dreams are like the narrow apex of a rooftop - any jolt or breeze can send them backwards into generic hopes (If I can't build enough details) or forward into fantasies (If I build too many ideas).
Here's a specific example. A few years back I had a crush on a girl I met. She was pretty, smart, funny and enough of a nerd that we had common interests. Instead of a generic hope of someday I'll have a partner, I began visualization I could be with this girl.
Shortly after that I started filling in her back story in my mind's eye - keep in mind that I didn't know her at all at this point, so the back story was completely invented by me. This began the fantasy stage. Specifically, a fantasy about this girl I made up who happened to share some features with a person in the real world.
Now I've been down this road before, so I deliberately throttled back on the details. "Don't do that," I told myself, "If you want to get to know this girl, maybe you should ask her out." It took a lot of mental will, not just to work up the nerve to ask her out, but to keep from second guessing myself and to stay in the dream/visualization stage.
I did ask her out. She said yes and we went out on a date. And nothing came of it because she wasn't interested in me. The mental effort was rewarded with rejection, which is the inevitable outcome, hence why I've sub-consciously trained myself not to go into that mental region, at least as far as potential relationships go. The more I visualize an actual relationship with an actual person, the more it hurts when it doesn't happen.
Which is not to say that I lack hope, or that I haven't examined those hopes in some way. I hope that I can find love someday and I even have an idea of a what my ideal mate would be like. I stop short of visualizing her though.
While I have good reasons for doing this with my romantic life, I don't really have an excuse for not visualizing dreams in my non-romantic life. Why am I not pursing dreams in other realms of my life? Sometimes it's a failure of imagination. Weight lose remains a hope, and I do work towards it, but I do so without dreaming/visualizing it. I literally can't imagine what it will be like when I'm at my goal weight. I don't know what it would be like having a body I don't loath. Still, I feel it's a worthwhile goal, so I continue to work towards it.
I suppose I dream of being better at archery - I do engage in visualization exercises for that, which is part of the reason I find my lack of improvement in archery so frustrating.
Owning a home was a dream for awhile. I did visualize it, especially when house hunting. I've now (mortgage not withstanding) achieved that goal and I'm quite happy with it.
Now it's possible I've completely misunderstood the point of this exercise. If so, here is what I currently hope for, with a bit of detail:
So what's the difference? I've thought a little bit about that due to this topic and I think it boils down to how specific the thoughts are and also how likely they are to turn out. Hopes are ephemeral, generic to the point of being ill-defined things.
Dreams are more specific then hopes - the visualization mechanism is starting to shape the hopes into something you could (for example) write a story about. Ideally it is a story that you can make come true.
Fantasies are dreams that have no chance of coming true. This could be because the thought itself is fantastical (i.e. I'm a superhero) or because the boat has already sailed (i.e. I'm married to my childhood sweetheart).
I hope that I'll get a partner some day.
I dream that it's a specific person.
I fantasize that the specific person is Kate Beckinsale.
That example may be TMI.
I don't know how common this is, but I tend to skip part two. I go straight from the hope to the fantasy. This is fine in moderation - there's nothing wrong with what I call lottery-fantasies. You pay your $3 and you day dream about what you're going to do with the money. So long as you're not taking out loans on your future winnings, it's all well and good.
The problem with skipping from dream to fantasy is that dreams are the precursors to action. If I hope to be a success, that's fine. If I fantasize about being rich and famous that's good in moderation, but it's not going to happen if I don't have a dream of becoming an actor. Dreaming about being an actor might prompt me to take acting lessons, or to try out for parts. Dreaming is the visualization stage that prompts one to do something. I can't take "Rich and Famous" classes.
I've trained myself to not to have dreams. Oh, I have lots of generic hopes, and I have a richly detailed fantasy life, but dreams tend to not last long. Dreams are like the narrow apex of a rooftop - any jolt or breeze can send them backwards into generic hopes (If I can't build enough details) or forward into fantasies (If I build too many ideas).
Here's a specific example. A few years back I had a crush on a girl I met. She was pretty, smart, funny and enough of a nerd that we had common interests. Instead of a generic hope of someday I'll have a partner, I began visualization I could be with this girl.
Shortly after that I started filling in her back story in my mind's eye - keep in mind that I didn't know her at all at this point, so the back story was completely invented by me. This began the fantasy stage. Specifically, a fantasy about this girl I made up who happened to share some features with a person in the real world.
Now I've been down this road before, so I deliberately throttled back on the details. "Don't do that," I told myself, "If you want to get to know this girl, maybe you should ask her out." It took a lot of mental will, not just to work up the nerve to ask her out, but to keep from second guessing myself and to stay in the dream/visualization stage.
I did ask her out. She said yes and we went out on a date. And nothing came of it because she wasn't interested in me. The mental effort was rewarded with rejection, which is the inevitable outcome, hence why I've sub-consciously trained myself not to go into that mental region, at least as far as potential relationships go. The more I visualize an actual relationship with an actual person, the more it hurts when it doesn't happen.
Which is not to say that I lack hope, or that I haven't examined those hopes in some way. I hope that I can find love someday and I even have an idea of a what my ideal mate would be like. I stop short of visualizing her though.
While I have good reasons for doing this with my romantic life, I don't really have an excuse for not visualizing dreams in my non-romantic life. Why am I not pursing dreams in other realms of my life? Sometimes it's a failure of imagination. Weight lose remains a hope, and I do work towards it, but I do so without dreaming/visualizing it. I literally can't imagine what it will be like when I'm at my goal weight. I don't know what it would be like having a body I don't loath. Still, I feel it's a worthwhile goal, so I continue to work towards it.
I suppose I dream of being better at archery - I do engage in visualization exercises for that, which is part of the reason I find my lack of improvement in archery so frustrating.
Owning a home was a dream for awhile. I did visualize it, especially when house hunting. I've now (mortgage not withstanding) achieved that goal and I'm quite happy with it.
Now it's possible I've completely misunderstood the point of this exercise. If so, here is what I currently hope for, with a bit of detail:
- A romantic partner - A woman not too dissimilar to me in age, who is reasonably intelligent, funny and good looking and has some commonality with me.
- I'd like to get to a point where I have more leisure time to enjoy life. This requires me removing a fair amount of debt so that I can reduce how much I work. Probably not going to happen in the next five years, but it could happen in ten.
- I'd like to get to a healthy weight.
- I'd like to get to a point in my life where my mental problems no longer overwhelm me.
