One of my favorite recent movies was “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Loosely based on a short story by James Thurber, the movie is about a man in a ho-hum job who spends much of his time in his head, creating scenarios and fantasies that put him at the center of action, love and adventure.
It’s not often that daydreaming takes a starring role in Hollywood. And these days, with our fast-paced lifestyle and ubiquitous electronic devices, it’s not often that daydreaming takes a starring role in our own lives.
For instance, instead of contemplating the next sentence for this article, I picked up my phone and checked the current temperature. (Three degrees above zero, in case you were wondering.) How often do we find ourselves filling the once-empty spaces of our lives with another Instagram swipe, YouTube clip or "Downton Abbey" episode?
Why does this matter? Daydreaming has been linked to all sorts of positive benefits. The cognitive psychologist Jerome L. Singer, through exhaustive study, found that “daydreaming, imagination and fantasy are essential elements of a healthy, satisfying mental life,” according to a research article in Frontiers.
In that same article, researcher Rebecca L. McMillan and her colleagues write: “Singer noted that daydreaming can reinforce and enhance social skills, offer relief from boredom, provide opportunities for rehearsal and constructive planning, and provide an ongoing source of pleasure. In later work, Singer describes those who engage in positive constructive daydreaming as ‘happy daydreamers’ who enjoy fantasy, vivid imagery, the use of daydreaming for future planning, and possess abundant interpersonal curiosity.”
The space for daydreaming is especially important for children. In fact, according to The Atlantic, studies have found that daydreaming, what we modern parents might call “downtime,” is just as crucial as a solid night’s rest.
The problem is that daydreaming, especially to the productive, hard-charging parents among us, looks like a big fat waste of time. I have a son who tends to wander the house, not really engaged in any activity. I thought he was spacing out, until one day I asked him what he was thinking about.
He proceeded to tell me an intricate story he had cooked up in his brain. I have since come to learn that this son of mine is nearly always developing stories in his head. His mighty mind is churning constantly. What I took to be plain spacing out was actually constructive daydreaming.
In this age of productivity, it can be hard to justify time for daydreaming. There is always an email to answer. There are podcasts and cooking shows and ideas for home renovation, all within reach. There are wonderful dance, music and art classes for our kids. There is an immense amount of pressure to treat our lives like endless to-do lists, worthwhile only if we are “filling the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run,” as the poet Rudyard Kipling wrote.
When our kids come to us, claiming to be bored, it’s all too easy to hand them the iPad. That’ll fill those unforgiving minutes!
But our minds need to wander. In a recent op-ed piece in The New York Times, psychology professor Daniel T. Willingham wrote about the two systems of attention — those focused outward and those focused inward.
When we fiddle with an electronic device or watch TV, we are focusing our attention outward. There is nothing wrong with this, except attention cannot be simultaneously focused outward and inward. Daydreaming is a type of inward attention. Cut that out, and we rob ourselves of the time to reflect, project and process the experiences around us.
In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” the short story version, Walter Mitty never moves outside his head, content to let his fantasies play out in the confines of his mind. In the movie, however, Walter Mitty takes a daring leap into the unknown. He acts upon daydreams. To me, he strikes that perfect balance of thinking, dreaming and, finally, doing.
It would be an example we would do well to follow. Most of us have the doing part down. It’s time to give ourselves, and our children, more space to become daydream believers.
Tiffany Gee Lewis lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is the mother of four boys. She blogs at thetiffanywindow.wordpress.com. Her email is tiffanyelewis@gmail.com.