The Hammock Papers: Possibilities.

12 March 2024

Possibilities.

The glorious benefits of daydreaming ...

In what may be the best-known study of the importance of self-control, psychologist Walter Mischel and colleagues found that hungry 3- to 5-year-olds who were able to distract themselves from a delectable treat beckoning them from a table right in front of them not only received a later reward, but performed better academically and socially in adulthood than the children who immediately stuffed their faces.

"Self-control" and "grit" are today's buzzwords in education. There's no question that they are important for learning and achievement. But educators underappreciate how much daydreams of a more enticing future can fuel grit by increasing our ability to inhibit more fleeting, momentary desires.

Turning attention away from the external world can also allow us to tap into our wellsprings of creativity. Many highly creative writers, artists, and scientists were major daydreamers as children. The long list of highly accomplished daydreamers includes Einstein, Newton, the Brontë family, W. H. Auden, and C. S. Lewis.

Some of the most creative ideas of all time leaped out of a daydream. A number of studies show that our best creative ideas don't emerge when we are focused intensely on a goal. Instead, they arise in those moments when our mind has wandered away from the task at hand to other worlds and possibilities. The Aha! moment typically arises when we make an unexpected connection between offline musings and a problem we've been working on.

Always keep a tin whistle or recorder nearby.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL