Embracing Fantasy in 2023

A popular conversation topic in January is always about New Year’s Resolutions. The classics around exercising, eating better and travelling are usually thrown around. Sometimes, more specific goals emerge, like completing a marathon or reading a certain number of books. I always enjoy hearing people’s New Year’s Resolutions, perhaps because of the hopefulness and motivation attached to them. I certainly was a fan of making them myself in the past (and even wrote a detailed blog post on how to stick to them).

And yet, when asked this year by some friends and family what I hope to achieve in 2023, I was at a loss to answer. Goals and resolutions suddenly felt suffocating. Every commitment seemed like another pressure, and I was reluctant to do that to myself. So, instead of making a list of goals this year, I oriented towards a word – or concept – that kept popping up in my mind.

Fantasy.

Yes, that’s right. Perhaps the very antithesis of a concrete goal is the concept of fantasy. Let me explain…

Fantasy is the space we inhabit when we let our minds drift far away from the mundane routines of everyday life – the working, cooking, washing, sleeping cycle we inhabit. Fantasy is our transcendent self, meaning the part of us that doesn’t actually exist, because it is in the realms of dreams and hopes. Fantasy is the part of our minds that is activated when we are lost in a beautiful song, a captivating book or film. It is our heart beating faster when we make eye-contact with a special someone and feel the urge to kiss them. For me, it is the rush of walking through the city I love and grew up in, taking in the elegant shops, historic buildings, busy commuters and feeling both anonymous and alone yet also connected to it all. 

How Fantasy Can Help Us Grow

You may be thinking that this all sounds a little bit up with the fairies. And maybe it is.  And yet, we need fantasy to help us cope with the challenges of reality. For example, when I find myself bogged down into some tedious paperwork or receiving some unexpected bad news, fantasy can help me find the will to push through, imagining myself relieved or stronger on the other side. 

Sometimes, recognising that something is a fantasy can also help us accept a reality. This is an idea I also work through with a lot of my patients in therapy. Who can’t relate to feelings like; “I wish I was different,” “I wish my partner was more like this,” “I wish that she understood me,” “I wish I didn’t have to work,” and “I wish I could just fix or escape this situation?” These wishes are in fact fantasies, and understanding their origins is an important part of self-knowledge and reality acceptance.

For example, the wish to be different could point to a lack of self-worth that needs to be healed through compassion and acceptance. But the wish to be different could also reflect genuine personality flaws that through insight and strategies can be improved upon and changed. Either way, we benefit and grow when we stop trying to block out our fantasies, and instead start listening to them and the truths they are trying to communicate to us about our deeper selves. 

How Fantasy Can Harm Us

Just because we might seek to understand our fantasies, doesn’t mean that we should also act them out.

If one of my fantasies is ‘Emily the city girl’ and I allow myself to be drawn into the impulse of buying beautiful, expensive clothes as I dance through the boutiques of the QVB, soon I would find myself in a state of financial crisis and regret! Some fantasies can have dangerous consequences if they are acted out.

But importantly, we should never be afraid of our fantasies, even if we have to cautiously navigate them. Through building self-understanding, we can recognise our fantasies, where they are coming from and draw inspiration from them, bringing a little bit of magic into our everyday life while balancing acceptance of what is, and will always remain, a fantasy.

Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach

Bessel Van Der Kolk  

Using our Imagination

I know that my ‘city girl’ fantasy reflects a nostalgia for my youth, the excitement of freedom in adulthood, an appreciation of beauty and a love of my city. I can still capture these elements of my fantasy without spending my entire pay cheque. I can still live out a version of my fantasy, while keeping a part of it in my imagination.

So, in 2023 I’m going to embrace fantasy, appreciating every magical moment and allowing my imagination and dreams to transform my reality. After all, everything was once just a fantasy, until it became a reality.