Fantasy and the un-sterile world

I’ve been thinking about the dangers of fantasy lately. We bury ourselves in movies and books, music and shows about how magical life can be. Just today, I was listening to an audiobook about how people can hide from their problems by fantasizing about things. We can use it like a coping mechanism to hide from our problems. I have had times where the right call, the call that I’m lining up and running with, doesn’t feel like a fantasy. My fights don’t feel like I’m on a pirate ship, battling Davy Jones in the pouring rain as our ships circle around a malicious maelstrom. My friendships don’t feel like Bill and Ted going on grand adventures. My life, well, it can almost feel…

Bland. 

It’s weird sometimes: I’ll know that a decision is the right one. It’s smart, it’s wise, it makes sense, but it isn’t exciting. It doesn’t capture my imagination. I often wonder why that is. What relationship is my imagination supposed to have with my everyday life? After all, my mind runs wild, and I love that. It makes my life worth living. But the question I’ve been asking myself lately, in light of this “coping mechanism” problem, is whether or not my imagination should be a bedrock, or a perk, or maybe something else in between. Here’s what I’ve come up with. 

I don’t know. 

I like this idea that we can, in fact, hide from our problems behind our fantasies. That’s a real thing. The word I like to use is “un-sterile,” to describe life a lot. Things can seem so imperfect. Our best friend might have a loud laugh, our siblings might be a little mean, and our partners might snore like nobody’s business. When we spend a lot of time in our fantasies, we tend to become a little more sensitive to those imperfections. They bother us more because we’re getting this idea that things aren’t supposed to be this way. Everything’s supposed to be sunshine and rainbows all the time. Life should never be bland or bleak. If we truly are where we’re supposed to be, then it’ll feel like we’re in perfect harmony with the universe. Don’t we hold tightly to that quote that we should do what we love so we will never have to work a day in our lives? Seems like that’s how we live nowadays. 

Whether it’s in my career, my friendships, my cars, or anything else, I have found myself to be the happiest when I come to terms with the fact that life just ain’t perfect. Yeah, I know–weird, right?!? It’s true, though. When you can take in the good, knowing that there will be some bad with it, you can really live your happiest life. It’s almost like building up a tolerance can help you be happier. You don’t have to lie to yourself anymore. You don’t have to pretend that life is something that it’s not: perfect. It isn’t convenient. It isn’t free of pain. And yet, it’s right. It is still, in some sense, good. 

I had to learn this in my career. There is no shortage of crap that I have to put up with (and I’m a plumber, so some days, I mean that literally.) There’s the drama, the company politics, the noise, the list goes on. If I had my way, I would do away with all of it in a heartbeat. This was a big struggle for me when I got back into tradework. I knew I felt like I was in the right place because I loved the physical nature of my work, but I still felt like I had a part of me that was begging for mercy. It was screaming at me to quit, to make all the crap go away. I had both of these feelings running through my head at the same time and it was weird. 

What confused me most about this time was the fact that my imagination couldn’t really weigh in on the situation. I couldn’t find a fantasy to relate to or a story to inspire me. Life just felt like a big, bleak desert. It sucked. I prayed and asked God for guidance, and all signs pointed to discipline, so that’s what I stuck to. I’m really glad I did, because I love what I do. It really is where I’m supposed to be. 

How do we reconcile these two ideas, though? How do we make sense of the fact that life can suck, but you can still find a place that you love, possibly even were meant to be? I think learning about discipline deepens our love for something. Getting good at sticking it out when things don’t feel like they’re a dream helps us to commit to that dream. It’s almost like we’re planting the seeds of that good thing deeper in the ground and it’s about to grow even bigger and stronger than it could have before. 

If we take this idea and blindly run with it, though, it could spell trouble. I could see someone using this idea that life can suck sometimes to justify staying in bad relationships, jobs or other stuff. How do we find that sweet spot, where we know that something’s worth being disciplined about? Geez, I’ve been running circles around this question for years, haven’t I?

I think this is why it’s so important to get good at discipline early on: you can learn to walk through things that suck without looking for anything good. Isn’t that what that hunt for purpose is all about: the hunt for something good when everything is bad? I get that we have to question our why’s from time to time, but if we are always questioning stuff, we will never punch through the hard times. We’ll stay timid forever, never roaring in the face of danger like territorial lions, defending our prides. 

So we should learn how to ignore this quest for the dream life for a time. We should learn to live in the dreary, grimy crap of the real world. But something weird happens the more we do: our fantasies become real again! But they come back in a way that’s a lot happier, because we don’t need them to move forward in our lives. We can have them or we can not and be happy either way. 

I can actually prove that this is real: I lived it! After my whole “punch through the voices” thing, I woke up one day and fell in love with stuff about sailing. Pirates, shanties, folk-style music–it all felt good to me all of a sudden. I found the setting relatable: being scorched by the sun, working hours that are long and tough, being a little crass and rough around the edges. It was all very real to me. But fantasizing felt different because my daydreams felt grounded. It was better, because it felt real-er. And if I don’t find a daydream for any particular day, I’m still happy. I guess I got a cooler way to relate to fantasy. 

Back to the question of what you should discipline yourself to, I think the answer is something that doesn’t completely suck. Things will suck sometimes, but if it’s killing you slowly for no real reason, it may be time to go do something else. Like I said, I still like having a career that’s physical. It’s fun for me. I always liked playing and learning drums. I got tired and a little burnt out for a while, but I think of it like a tide. No matter how off-course you get, you’ll still wind up flowing in a certain direction. That direction might have something to do with where you’re supposed to be. 

Until Next Time

May Peace be your Guide.