Fantasy Land
What do you do in a situation where you are repeatedly told ‘No’? Or the situation is such that you don’t seem to have an exploration path ahead and you are told that the best option you have is to follow the rules, to comply and make your life easier?
What if that situation lasts roughly 18 years? Say, during your development years.
Option 1: Do you rebel and fight? Openly or sneakily — make your pick.
Option 2: Do you cope with the situation and protect yourself?
Well, today we talk about option 2: the genesis of what I like to call Fantasy land. Fantasy land is what I created in my head as a child. It is where everything came true. I could be the next APJ Abdul Kalam and work in ISRO, I could be a skater and be good at sports, or I could be a great professor and have wisdom to impart at social gatherings. Not having the right ways to fulfill any of these dreams, hell, even verbalizing any of them was so beyond me that they were just better off in my head than in the real world where they could be crushed. I used this fantasy to escape into a zone where I did not have to worry about money, or the right guidance or being told no just because it was too much effort to try anything without an ‘end goal’ or a reliable career.
As time passes, the fantasy land expanded, the dreams become bigger and I spent more time there exploring the minutest of details — like the color of the outfit I would wear when I am on stage giving my Ted talk, or what incident I would mention when I meet a fan at my book reading.
Not just me, a lot of us use the fantasy of an already fulfilled dream to cope with reality where we not only have not fulfilled them but might not even be on that path. Why would we do that, you ask? Someone can use it to escape the reality of a loved one’s death, someone could use it to escape a life which does not fill their stomachs, or someone could use it to imagine what life would be if they met ‘the one’ but without any of the real-life hardships that come with a relationship. And honestly? It’s a nice escape. It gives us a moment of levity in our harsh, harsh world. It gives us hope that we still have a life to look forward to, a life with endless possibilities still.
Unfortunately, with time, that fantasy can stand in the way of your very real life.
At 13 years, it is a relief to escape because you don’t know how to make these two worlds of fantasy and reality meet and you naively hope things will automatically work out one day.
At 30, it is plain scary, especially if you use it to escape your real life and you are faced with 2 choices- to find a way to steer your reality towards this fantasy OR live a life of essentially running away; and you might not have developed the skills or have access to the means that can help you with option 1.
So, being the sensible person you are, you slowly try to come back to reality- but it feels like a part of you has been separated and taken away. Like all coping mechanisms stretched far too long, it becomes an addiction and is ingrained as part of your personality. Pushing away that part of yourself that has an innate attachment to the fantasy land almost feels like a loss, like rejection of that very child and the beauty she created in her own world that she couldn’t find in real life.
Case in point, I want to write and publish, but that would require a leap of faith, a real and sincere effort and hard work, and facing the very real fear of finding out what every newbie is scared of — that I am not good enough, I don’t have what it takes. It is especially hard because I am not fighting externally — there is no authority or parent figure stopping you who you can put the blame on.
How easy would that be, right?
I could for example just say- Oh, my dad never allowed me to go out of the house and play sports at 13, so I could never get better at it. I never got the confidence to play a sport in a crowd of people because I was naturally never good at it, and nothing in my environment inspired confidence in me to push myself. So, I just never tried.
While not 100% justified, you get the logical reasoning.
But when I tell the story of why I did not try to publish with all the time and means available to me, I have no one else to blame… but me.
No wonder so many of us are happy in the dream. It is so much easier washing your hands off any responsibility and being in the limbo of comfortable living, convincing yourself that you have what you need and anything else you wanted was stupid in the first place. Unwittingly, your voice becomes your parents’ voice telling you ‘No’, the voice of that teacher who discouraged you, that friend who laughed at you for asking a question, that relative who encouraged you to simply follow convention because it’s safe, that boss who didn’t support you for approaching things differently. You tell yourself it won’t work because that is what you have trained yourself to see in any tough situation. You believe everyone but yourself because you don’t trust yourself to see through things, to really KNOW if things would work out if you simply followed your instincts especially as a child because you have no means to. So, it’s easier to just follow other people’s instincts and tell yourself that’s the truth.
BUT it doesn’t have to be that way.
The truth is that there are multiple truths.
That the world is vast and wide and can have people living out their own versions of life without them having to impose one over the other.
And sooner or later, you will recognise that the voice in your head refuses to leave, and you can’t flee it.
You can’t fight it either.
Your real-world experience has taught you caution, and the fantasy land has taught you vision.
The way out is not abandoning fantasy land, or to suppress it. It is using the fantasy land’s vision to shape your reality. Say you carved out an okay life, not great, not shabby- this is where most of us reside. We are doing fine, more or less. Reality can be boring, and routine can feel repetitive. Maybe it’s time to enroll in those skating lessons you always wanted and bring some energy and fun in your life. Conversely, it is using the knowledge of the real world that you have gained over time to address what fantasies are worth fulfilling, both in terms of feasibility and identity. Do these dreams match up to who you are right now? Or are you trying to bring alive who you were at 13? Do you really want to be a magician anymore or you saw a show once and got inspired to be one when you didn’t know any better?
Mind you, fantasy land is not always the place of unfulfilled dreams. It is also the place of all those fun ideas that you just didn’t know how to implement. It can be a source of inspiration, of incorporating innovation. I use my fantasy land to make work interesting — what did I think would be a fun way to work when I was younger? How do I make my workday like I am playing a game?
Questions like this help you merge these worlds together without sacrificing anyone, but they take effort and intentionality. Just like escape into fantasy land became part of you by sheer habit, so is stepping out of it. Those fears of not being recognised in the real world, of shattering that fantasy because it never is the same way in reality, are much, much smaller than the fear of the regret of never even trying to make your reality the way you wanted it to be, of honoring your true desires and instincts, and of giving a real shot at what you truly want.
If you liked this article, check out related posts on my blog The Red Cabinet.
