Or, we can think of it as the art of balancing dream with reality. Sometimes in order to be happy it is necessary to pretend our dreams are real.
I keep reading that happiness requires being "present in the moment," that it is impossible for people to imagine a future in which they actually would be happy--because future imaginings exclude rationalization, that often the anticipation of the future is better than the future itself. (This is coming, not only from Gretchen, but also from Stumbling on Happiness
by Dr. Gilbert)I've been told so many times lately, "That's not reality. You have to get back to reality." People say it sympathetically, or pityingly, or even condescendingly. I haven't written much because it made me so sad to think about being stuck in reality. Really, I'm not ready to grow up.
I keep thinking of myself as a little girl. Imagination was my life then. And though a nagging voice tells me that's because I had no life, I know that it's not really true. I think about all the books we read as children, the classics, and how every single child there had a rich dream world they escaped to. Why-- when we start to grow up-- why do we lose that? What if we kept our dream worlds and we, too, could escape to them when we needed to, just like when we were kids?
Then, if we held onto our dreams, we could pick and choose our lives. In our dreams, we know exactly who we want to be, and nothing is impossible. Personally, when I close my eyes and imagine a future unbounded by any rules or regulations, I'm a writer, with long brown hair that isn't poofy. I live in a quaint little house with floor to ceiling bookcases and wide windows. When I open my eyes, it's not too hard to think-- okay. So who knows if the house is going to work, and goodness knows the hair is impossible, but the writer thing? All I would have to do is actually write something. And, I have things to write, I just haven't written them yet. If I were to realize even a tiny part of my dream world, it feels like everything in my life would be so much happier.
And that is why I have concluded-- the art of happiness is the art of reconciling who you are with who you wish you were.
