Daydream Believer

Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes it feels like the news media, the scientific establishment, and our mothers are in cahoots to undermine every decision we make as adults. “Nearly 1 in 5 older women are going childless,” reads one hectoring headline; it might as well say, “Study Finds That Your Eggs Aren’t Going to Last Forever, You Know. And Have You Done Something Different With Your Hair?” Occasionally, though, some wonderfully enabling news will escape from the annals of science, justifying what we think of as our worst habits, like the recent report that coffee— and lots of it— may prevent cancer. Earlier this week, the New York Times relayed some decidedly mixed messages. In short: daydreaming is good for you, except when it’s not.

The good half of the news is that a tendency for flights of fancy does not automatically make one a starry-eyed, tragicomic figure like Walter Mitty. In fact, daydreaming can function as an important coping mechanism. John Tierney writes, “A wandering mind can protect you from immediate perils and keep you on course toward long-term goals. Sometimes daydreaming is counterproductive, but sometimes it fosters creativity and helps you solve problems.” So, dreaming about the private Caribbean island you’ll one day own is probably not a good thing when you’re, say, a writer with a looming deadline; but on a long car ride through Kansas, such flights of fancy are not just harmless, they’re practically essential. Daydreaming keeps us from dwelling on the drudgery of the task at hand and allows us to focus on longer-term goals of prosperity and happiness—even on the off-chance that our private island estate never comes to be.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com