Daydreaming

The dictionary definition: to spend time thinking pleasant thoughts about something you would prefer to be doing or something you would like to achieve in the future. 

Not to be confused with visualization, which is more focused and deliberate with intent to manifest in the near future. 

Daydreaming is an innate ability and delightful pastime often lost on us grownups. I hope that I can advocate for a way back to some creative and quality “me time” for you today. 

Daydreaming is this wonderful ability, this fun, almost childlike way of imagining your future and life in general. A free and limitless way of creating a “happy place” within us that we can access at any time. For free. For whenever you feel like it. How cool is that! 

As a nostalgic poet-child at heart, I love the term ‘daydreaming’. It feels exciting, yet soft and inviting, like a jumping castle in the clouds where I can play to my heart’s delight with all the dreams and desires brewing deep inside my soul.  When I daydream, I start with a clear idea of what I want and then I just let the dream take me where it wants to go – to me THAT is the joy of the entire experience. I’ve been an avid daydreamer all my life. 

As a kid, growing up just outside the city with access to the most beautiful garden and a swing to boot, so much of my daydreaming happened while in swinging motion. Some days I would swing and dream until the sun set, other times I wouldn’t even notice the raindrops falling on and around me. I would be lost and in love with all the wonderful dreams where I lived for a while. To this day I’m still a big-time daydreamer and swinger. 😉 

As with most things in life, my daydreams mature as I do.  

When I was a little barefoot girl growing up in paradise, I would daydream about waking up in the morning to find that I had turned into a mermaid. Having a big pool in the backyard I felt assured that I could easily live that mermaid life with my human family.  What felt like forever went by and I figured that mermaid life was not happening. So, I pivoted to waking up and discovering that I had turned into a tiny little fairy who could fit in the palm of my parents’ hands. I loved the idea of being so small and being able to fly. I knew my sisters would love having a little fairy sister, I mean, who wouldn’t?! But alas, that fairy life was not meant to be either. So instead, I settled on having my own fairy. I was, and still am a little, obsessed with fairies. So much so that I wore fairy wings to my matric dance (prom for the American readers).  

After waiting for my fairy as long as can be expected of a little girl, I pivoted again. I was obsessed with being small and fitting in the palm of a hand. So, the next logical daydream was to wake up one morning to find a giant outside my window who would put me in the palm of his hand and have me at school in 5 minutes with his giant strides. Full disclosure, I didn’t just daydream for this giant, I also prayed for him right after I prayed for the wellbeing of all humankind, so I figured I got this!  

Soon after this, the acting bug bit me hard and I decided that I want to become a world-famous actor, hence my daydreams took a radical turn.  

Many afternoons were spent designing movie posters with my name on them.  Getting lost in my life as a Hollywood actor, my boyfriend, Keanu Reeves, being a multi-millionaire, all the beautiful dresses I would wear when accepting all my Oscars. Then I would design those dresses and add Keanu next to me just to solidify the future manifestation. I daydreamed about the famous friends I would have and all the movie stars I would meet on sets all over the world. I’ve never stopped daydreaming about this, to this day. 

As life evolves, my daydreams stay on trend. These days I am an aunty, a title I wear with great pride. I daydream about my visits to South Africa and time spent with my nieces and nephew. I daydream about them visiting me wherever I end up in the world. I secretly hope I’ll be rich enough one day to employ them and they can live with me forever.  

I’m also an eager traveler, and often daydream about eating my way through Italy, a romantic holiday in the Maldives, a week away on an island with all my close girlfriends. As a romantic at heart, I still daydream about falling in love and spending the rest of my life with a wonderful man. And since I could remember I daydreamed about being an old lady with long white hair, living on my wine farm in Spain with my 6 boys I will adopt, and eventually with their wives and babies. Baking bread, making wine, and having friends, family and artists come and visit, sitting around this very long wooden table outside, drinking wine and eating food from the land, skinny dipping (big fan), big bonfires and naked little ones running around.  

In my daydreams I bask in the delight of being loved by my soul mate – could still be Keanu Reeves – I am always happy, healthy, wealthy, loved and busy writing some story or other, I hope to bring to life someday.  

Daydreaming truly is a happy place I make time for and indulge in its infinite possibilities. It’s a forever changing happy place that can accompany us till the day we leave this earth, and why would we not hold on to that tightly? 

It’s this love for daydreaming and the swing where it all started that inspired this little sketch “Daydreaming”.  One rainy Sunday afternoon in my studio apartment in Korea, staring out the window, I started daydreaming about all the new possibilities as a single, divorced, ready-to-live-my-life, expat. And I started sketching “Daydreaming”. 

If you are a daydreamer like me, you know what’s up, and if it’s been a while since you enjoyed a trip to your happy place, I say: daydream away baby!!   

Live, love, laugh, let go and light up the world in your own unique way. 

Love, always 

Ané