Fantasy, imagination, the unconscious mind, and the subconscious brain have long captured my thoughts and attention. I find it fascinating that even when our logical brains and our extremely rationed realities seem to be the dominate force in our daily lives that there is always a part of our brain spiking in and out of influence. However, from research, we know throughout the day our subconscious brain guides us more often than our conscious mind, however strong the impact of the subconscious brain is we still don’t fully understand it. What strikes me even more fascinating is that when we are asleep all rationale and reasoning goes out the window, completely. Fantasy and imagination take control and become the dominate force. The parts of our brains that control rationale and reasoning completely shut off and the parts of our brain that handles emotion and fantasy explode into activity, this deactivation of rationale and reasoning and the activation of emotion and fantasy is why we have such fantastical dreams. It is why we have nightmares, why we have grand adventures, and why we have such vivid sexual or passionate dreams. Two of the most powerful emotions are fear and love/lust, scientists believe this is the reason why, absent of rationale and reason, the emotional part of our brains explode into activity and why we will, more often than not, have dreams revolving around fear or love/lust. For me personally most my dreams revolve around love (in all its incarnations: lust, passion, or logical abandon), the older I get the less my world is controlled by fear and in return my dreams are also controlled less by fear. The strange part is that dreams of love can quickly change into dreams of fear and pain. The brain has a unique ability to switch drastically from one polar opposite emotion to the other, just like a light switch.
Dreams must be heeded and accepted. For a great many of them come true. ~ Paracelsus
Fantasy is a major factor in our lives, it is important for human development and more important for the development of creativity. Fantasy allows us to use our imagination and dream about things that we desire. It can give us focus or lend discovery to a particular subject matter. In the world of creativity having excellent fantasy and imagination skills is extremely valuable with a massive ROI. Which is why it astonishes me that kids that are daydreaming during class or at home get yelled at and told to pay attention. I use to be one of those kids, shit I still am. I daydream all the time, it allows me to imagine a world that I want to live in, a life that I want to lead, and it gives me the fantastical ideas that I can then work into reality. I wish authority and adult figures would embrace the daydreaming kid, instead of yelling and snapping at them they should ask the kid to share his imagination, group all the kids together and do a creative expression project. Instead of the kid being chastised for being imaginative, the kid would be rewarded with ability to express themselves with a class project that where everyone gets to participate and the class builds the fantasy world into reality, ultimately learning to dream together. Obviously some kids fantasy worlds are dangerous but this could also be a means to identify patterns in “at risk” kids and get them help they need and deserve before it is too late.
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities. ~ Dr. Suess
Fantasy and imagination are often looked down upon and as a staple ineptitude with things like “that boy is too dumb to be able to pay attention to class material”, something I myself have overheard teachers saying. This notion of ineptness or stupidity is complete bullshit, maybe your fucking class and your world is too boring, too mind numbing, and stripped of any individuality that we fantasizers and dreamers need to project ourselves into another world. Imagination and fantasy should be nurtured and expressed into constructive works.
He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher… or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. ~ Douglas Adams
Fantasy should be embraced as individuality and a unique view upon the world. As creatives or aspiring creatives we need to embrace our individuality and our fantasies. Nurturing our fantasies to produce works of creativity is by far the most important aspect in creative endeavours, it allows us to perform at our peak. This writing was inspired by a dream I had about a girl from a bygone era in my life. It’s a creative expression of a fantasy that I had through a dream, an exploration into why fantasy and imagination are important, most of the things I feel are important that I do are inspired by my fantasies and imagination. Pursuing photography, writing, and travel were first developed from a fantasy that I have about the adventurers and explorers of the 1700’s and 1800’s. Even though I’m not from that era I fantasize about traveling the world, exploring and experiencing the worlds that famous adventurers did, then capture them in time with my photography. It is a pursuit that I am actively working on, which was born from a fantasy I had as a boy. Creativity is directly connected to fantasy and imagination, we need to stop looking at people fantasizing as less intelligent because they can’t stay focused on the “real” world but more intelligent because they chose to dream and imagine what the world could be like. These people see the world in a different way, they can change, bend, and manipulate the world in their minds to generate a new perspective. This is not ineptitude, this is creative dominance. Embrace dominance and thrive on your fantasies and imagination.
The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge. ~ Albert Einstein