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Columns
Daydreaming
Daydreaming is good for you. Doing nothing
too. Emptying your mind, roaming through a void,
heading for nowhere, and at the same time
imagining how it smells, feels, almost tastes
there. Kids have a natural talent for this. They
slouch in a chair with a look of total boredom,
legs dangling absentmindedly as if lacking all
bones. As elastic as their bodies are, just as
elastic their brains seem to be. Without effort
they switch from homework to sunny beach, from
strenuous exercise to dreaming about playing
football barefoot. And when I ask “a penny for
your thoughts”, I get an absentminded answer:
“oh, nothing”. Ah, how wonderful!
When they return from no man’s land, where they
can reside stoically and for hours on end, in
the presence of the whole family but without any
sense of guilt, they sometimes spill out the
most brilliant philosophical questions and
theories across my kitchen table. ‘Uh … gosh …
wow’, I hear myself stammer while – to gain
inspiration - I take a sip of port, stir in pots
and pans, help my oldest son with his French,
while clearing away socks, bags and shoes and in
between cleaning up the pup’s wet puddle. But
actually they don’t expect any answers from me.
All they are doing is putting the door open an
inch for me to get a look into that special
world behind staring eyes. A world that we
seldom enter. What about them? They tinker away
at a promising ‘project’ and rebuild their rooms
into an architect’s office, lab or workshop. Or
they pretend a headache to be able to sleep
late, and then suddenly turn out to be able to
play ‘Kiss the Rain’ on the piano without a
single error. Amazing!
I don’t get jealous quickly, but this natural
float-away mode of kids can make me jealous
without feeling embarrassed. I believe I first
need a week’s holiday, away from everything and
everyone, that I need to go through the wringer
of retreats and shrinks, to kick the habits of
social media and other noise-eliciting trendy
activities, before I can slide down to the
silence of ‘the void’. Grim and determined, I
surf to meditation holidays, find costly luxury
trips to Ibiza, France and Norway and see that
they promise ‘balance’ but especially ‘wholeness’.
Ah, I suddenly discover that I am already well
on the way. A moment later, in a chair, in the
garden under the still bare weeping willow, the
wind that blows through the branches reminds
intensely of the murmur of the sea. The dogs
under my bare feet feel like soft beach sand,
and the smell of a freshly toasted sandwich can
pass for a grilled goat cheese on a Spanish
sidewalk café. ‘Hold on, hold on,’ I whisper to
myself with eyes closed, and at the same time I
notice that I am back where I was. Ouch! Back to
the next taxi ride, the laundry, a starting
quarrel among the kids, the lilies of the valley
dug up by the dogs, my appointment tonight, the
final inspection of my books before they head
for the printer. But there was hope in this
moment of idle wandering.
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Written on 12 April 2011 |
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