A fantastical reality
I have fought a personal battle with fantasy for pretty much my whole life. I suppose I preferred the life in my mind rather than what was presented to me. I suspect I’m not alone in this choice.
Our world makes escaping into a better realm very appealing; our minds offer no fear, no pain, no suffering – all is as it should be.
It’s taken me up to last week (please don’t make me put my years down in numbers!) to accept this truth about myself – while some people see the world through rose-tinted glasses, I don’t see it at all. I was always aware of my illusionary barrier, I just had no idea of how much it ruled me.
I was still caught in the illusion that my fantasies somehow served me, after all my imagination has fueled my vision, ambition, courage, even my identity. I’ll never forget the first time I picked up a fantasy novel – the magnificent DragonLance, filled with wizards and warriors and worlds circled by 3 moons. Being only 11yr s old I did not know that I had picked up book number 3 in a 9 book series.
This never deterred me as my imagination filled in the previous 2 novels and off I went. It was the start of a long and faithful affair with fantasy.
This year, being inordinately difficult on every level pushed me to finally confront the fact that I had somehow lost the power in my relationship with fantasy and had become a slave. Ignoring what reality was trying to present me with, forgetting that life experienced in imagination can never compare to what reality can give you
My revelations and new found respect for the ignorance of reality-living has gotten me thinking…
Has our imagination evolved with our reasoning minds? Did early man have such a rich world to retreat to when the going got tough?
Has our evolving imagination birthed the depravities that we witness today, or has the depravity of evolving mankind necessitated the need for a fantasy world to escape to?
We retreat from reality because we can’t face the pain around us and within us until even our safe havens are tainted by the shadow that is our current world.
Do we use the power of our imagination to better influence our world in need?
Or do we find the courage to say good-bye to fantasy and face our world eye to eye and change it where it hurts?
Is it worth closing our eyes to see ourselves sailing on the big blue, the wind in our hair and laughter on our faces… when where we sit not one hair has whispered a movement…
