Why Dreaming Sometimes Leads to Discontentment

I was that kid who climbed a tree one day with a pillow in one hand and a book in the other so I could sit on the branch more comfortably to read. I would lie (not jump) on my trampoline alone and stare at the sky and think whatever important thoughts I had at age nine.

I had what my mom called “an active imagination” and I exercised this muscle often. I would catch myself daydreaming in class all the time. Listening to a sermon was nearly impossible. Over the course of those 20 minutes my head had been in so many different places I would worry I had been talking aloud during church.

I think an active imagination is a wonderful thing.

Stories and characters and made up games and alternate universes – that’s the good stuff. It’s why fiction writers are my heroes. And there are moments when daydreaming is great and propels us forward in our lives, like when we take our dreams and write them down and figure out a way we could actually achieve them. But I don’t tend to be productive in my daydreaming, and I’ve realized once I return from my time in space, I’m less content.

*Photo Credit: Elin Schönfelder, Creative Commons

You see, in my daydreams I am this really incredible, fearless person who travels constantly and has foreign boyfriends who financially support my gypsy, writing lifestyle. Then I wake up, and I’m sitting in my cubicle with a half-written email staring back at me and a calendar and a printer and a mug of cold coffee that’s hours old. And I’m unsatisfied with my life.

I’m ungrateful because nothing is measuring up.

I could have pranced into work that day completely happy and humming as I wrote my to-do list, but a few minutes in lala land sets me back for the entire afternoon.

Sometimes that feeling of discontentment is good and means we are supposed to move or make some sort of change in our lives. That’s not what I’m talking about here. This type of discontentment is rooted in ingratitude and feels sort of poisonous to the soul.

The instruction in scripture to take captive our thoughts has to be the most difficult thing Paul ever asked us to do, but I keep discovering more and more reasons why that part is included in his letter to the Corinthians.

So I’m trying to be better at this.

One way that seems to help is keeping a prayer book on my desk at work that I reach for as quickly as possible when my mind starts to slip. This prayer book (mine is called Yours Is the Day, Lord, Yours Is the Night, but any would do) has morning and evening prayers for each day. I read one of them very slowly and sometimes over and over again until I’m refocused. It is so hard. Harder than working out, but, like exercise, it’s so rewarding.

Why Dreaming Sometimes Leads to Discontentment is a post from: Storyline Blog