Bev sent in this article when I asked for people's views on daydreams for last issue's article. Her article was too good for me to use mere snippets last issue, so here is the full piece. WHAT IF......? by Bev Truter Hmmmm. This could turn out to be a very interesting subject indeed - day-dreams. But first though, how about those annoying pre- sleep, involuntary 'day-dreams' one has, after you're tucked up for the night, feeling sleepy, and your mind absolutely refuses to co- operate? "No!", it protests, "I'll just wander around in circles for a bit, churning out bits and pieces of rubbish for a while." If I've been playing Settlers during the day, then I just know my brain will rabbit on and on for ages, producing unwanted scenes of a hand gorily chopped off at the wrist (the mouse pointer in Settlers, to choose the various building functions) bouncing up and down over a blurry scene of trees, lakes and guard huts. And the snag is, the more you firmly tell your brain to just shut up and switch off, the less sleepy you feel. Interestingly enough, a friend of mine who's also keen on Settlers has the same problem getting to sleep after a hard day slaving over yet another Settlers' scenario - but her brain doesn't produce the bouncing hand-and-fingers, it produces an endless succession of little yellow houses (the HELP feature for building in Settlers). And Jess (my daughter) says that after playing Rollercoaster Tycoon (or RollerToaster Cocoon, as she's taken to calling it) for 14 hours, all she sees when she starts drifting off to sleep are streams and streams of little people, patiently waiting in queues for the various rollercoasters. I suppose there might be a moral in there somewhere for all of us - stop spending so much time on the computer! But 'real' day-dreams are altogether different. Day-dreaming has been described as a pleasant activity, a sort of story-telling to oneself, where you allow your mind to indulge itself in all sorts of pleasant dreams, schemes, and fantasies. I tend to day-dream while doing monotonous chores, like ironing or washing dishes; and I remember at school I was forever being scolded for staring out the window, miles away, lost in my own little world (horses, beaches, mountains, usually) instead of concentrating on Geography, which was the only subject at school I detested. I'd guess in these instances that day- dreaming is just a way of escaping from a boring or unpleasant situation for a few minutes at a time. But there are other times when I deliberately slip into `day-dream mode' for longer periods, which makes me wonder if day-dreaming, like dreaming when asleep, is a necessary part of our lives. Perhaps it's essential for one's health and well-being to drift into `day-dream mode' now and then? The Concise Oxford dictionary describes `day-dream' as "indulging in fancy or reverie while awake", which sums it up pretty neatly. On the subject of day-dreams, Samuel Johnson remarked: "In solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert." What thoughts then does your mind mull over when you give it free rein for a while? What do YOU day-dream about? Personally, I tend to go for the 'what if' kind of day- dreams, imagining myself in impossible situations. For instance, what if you could choose to live your whole life over again - would you choose to be the same person? The same sex? The same century? Would you choose the same partner? I'd like to experience a totally different life...how about a wealthy landowner in the 16th century? A buccaneer? How about marrying Kevin Costner? What would it be like to be Elizabeth Taylor? A Pharaoh? An alien from another world? Captain Kirk? How would you feel being Queen Elizabeth I? Picasso? Enid Blyton? Bill Gates? Albert Einstein? What if you were as rich as Bill Gates - what on earth would you do with so much money? How would you handle the fame? And then there are much less dramatic day-dreams, like wondering where to go for a holiday, not exactly planning ahead, but imagining yourself on holiday in a favourite place or exotic location, with good friends, good food, good times. Day-dreaming can also be nostalgic, sometimes very sad. Looking back on happy events in the past, remembering friends and family, re-living what was said and what was done. That's the beauty of day-dreams - for a while you can live again in the past, change the past, make events unfold exactly as you'd like, or even imagine a fantasy past for yourself, like a different childhood, perhaps? I often wish I'd been brought up in the English countryside, somewhere in Devon, before the Second World War. Don't ask me why! I had a perfectly happy childhood in South Africa, so where do these odd longings come from? I should think that everyone indulges in day-dreaming now and then, some people more frequently than others. Perhaps as life becomes less exciting and more predictable day-dreaming increases? Do older people day-dream more than twenty-somethings? Do women day-dream more than men? I just don't know. The next time I pop into the local library, I'll have a look around for books on this very intriguing subject, now that my curiosity's stirred. The film "Sliding Doors" portrayed a `what if' situation, although not in the day-dreaming sense. It showed what might happen if at some point your life split into two separate paths, triggered by either catching, or failing to catch, a particular train home from work. It's fun to day-dream about a similar situation happening to oneself - what if you had missed a bus/train/party/conference at some crucial point in your life, and that somehow altered the course of your life? Would you have married someone else? Would you still be single? Would you be working in the same job now, living in the same town/country? The possibilities of `what if' are endless, limited only by your own imagination! And then, of course, there's the ultimate `what if...' question. What if you could re-live just five years of your life, as 'you', all over again? Which five consecutive years would you choose? - o -