Today’s topic is unusually serious: Dreams, fantasies, faith, hope, imagination. The NYT recently published a timely feature about the human need for these flights of mind—and their potential fadeaway during the pandemic and political gravitas. Their research includes academicians that put a pedantic, though compelling, spin on this ethereal reality.

Bottom line? You need to do it. And it don’t come easy during these twisted times.

• Borrowing BreakAway thunder?

MYBA suffers little from delusions of grandeur. Yet we’ve been passionately preaching the “if you can dream it, you can do it” gospel for decades, and via this blog since 2008. The proprietor has taken at least 5 sabbaticals; the proof is within clicks herein. And yet the themes of travel, escapism, career breaks, and diversion have taken a beat-down lately.

Meanwhile, the host has taken to writing about tangential topics…and wondering if he (or any of us) will ever fly into a lifestyle of wild blue wonder again. And when it comes to digging into the now-familiar symptoms of loneliness, worry, anomie, and fear of the future… For now, I’ll just play the stoic face card. And get back to the Times.

• The profound need for daydreaming

The NYT article talks to real-world people who long to dance, dress up, go gallivanting, throw parties. Others, perhaps due to financial and employment stresses, have simplified to aspirations like taking their kids to a playground or just hugging their mom. In other words, not all fantasies are grandiose: “They are fantasizing about what they’re missing right now,” explains Deirdre Barret, a Harvard psychologist.

Professor Martin Seligman of U Penn has long studied and promoted that daydreaming lets people step away “from focusing on what’s wrong to what makes life worth living.” Indeed, without such mental meanderings, we may let go of hope, resilience, relationships, meaning, and more. In other words, folks, hold on. To your yearnings, your postponed pleasure, to your…dreams.

• Thanks, we needed that

Breakaway has advocated for free time, outdoor adoration, unplugging, and running away through all kinds of conditions: Dot-com booms (when many people got rich fast); dot-com busts; recessions; 9-11; terrorism; wars of all kinds; a killer pandemic; and markets (and the moods that follow them) up and down. The goals seem, to me, timeless, common-sensical, and essential.

With any luck, you’ve got 75+ years or so to work and/or play on this planet. If there is any conceivable way, why not take a small percentage of that time to chase your dreams? (What’s not to like here?)

But, but, but, I must admit that the challenges of late—for the planet, for people to stay physically healthy, and to avoid pervasive despair—seem more powerful than ever. What to do? Who knows? So we look for guidance from experts in the NYT, or friends on the phone, or loud music or quiet meditation. We fall back on rallying cries like, “Tough times don’t last, tough people do.” And, advise the experts, we dream on…

So please practice your daydreaming. And keep the faith.

“The important thing about imagination is that it gives you optimism.”