After weeks at home, the days are starting to blur together. Abundant family time is beautiful and challenging. Can you relate?
I’m moving more slowly. No need to rush, no hurry. Life has become relatively simple. I’ve been doing plenty of rolling around on the floor with my 6-month-old. We listen to the birds, gaze at the trees, watch for butterflies. My mind wanders.
Part of me feels guilty. An inner voice admonishes, “Stop being lazy, you should be making progress, get back to doing (fill in the blank).”
“Shhh!” I respond to that nagging voice. “Be quiet, I’m daydreaming!”
I’ve learned from experience that this slowing down is valuable, it’s prime time for letting the dreams flow. This is where the magic happens. We have been gifted a mindfulness pause. We have an opportunity to go slower and explore our wild ideas; to visualize a new future. This unusual time may allow us to reconnect with our imaginations, individually and as families. Daydreamers aren’t limited by geographic restrictions, we can go anywhere!
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere,” said Einstein.
Our family business began as a daydream over a decade ago. Just prior to rolling up our sleeves and building our jungle lodge, we embarked on a two-month kayaking adventure on Baja’s Sea of Cortez. My father, brother, and I spent 8-to-10 hours a day paddling on a journey of nearly 1000 miles of wilderness. Though our arms moved rhythmically and our bodies were confined to the kayaks, our minds were free to roam.
We had an abundance of family time. As we paddled hundreds of miles of pristine coastline, I unleashed my daydreams, opened to vast possibilities. I lost myself in the peaceful dance of the water currents and ripples. With each mile of coastline, our eco-lodge dream morphed. “Questions and answers shot through my head like arrows. Some hit the target, others missed by a mile. Bull’s-eyes were collected and safeguarded in my mind.” My brother became my devil’s advocate; poking holes in my wild ideas, ultimately making our shared vision stronger.
With this abundance of time at home, why not open our minds and teach our kids the power of daydreams? So many children are told to get their heads out the clouds. Now is an ideal time to rewire that thinking.
Why is it that daydreamers have gotten a bad rap, while visionaries are celebrated? Visionaries like Yvon Chouinard (Patagonia founder) or Steve Jobs (Apple co-founder) were daydreamers long before they took action. Einstein was a classic daydreamer, yet consider all that he achieved! Daydreaming is an essential prerequisite to action.
Let’s take this opportunity to pause, surrender to our daydreams, and see where they take us—as parents and as children. May the family daydreams flow! Be realistic (we are all beholden to the laws of gravity), but don’t hold back.
As we unleash our daydreams, may we have the strength and courage to embrace inevitable change, transition, and whatever comes next. We will boldly reach for the next trapeze bar of life.
“Sometimes, I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I’m either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments, I’m hurdling across space between the trapeze bars. Each time I am afraid I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless basin between the bars. But I do it anyway. I must. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening. Hurtling through the void, we just may learn to fly.” — Danaan Parry
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