The Fantasist Gone Wrong

I'm pretty sure everyone has/is going through that familiar overwhelming whirlpool of work..due dates...tests...grading...ACT/SAT...and aaahhh! At times like these, I just can't take the stress and go to sleep with the thought "let the chips fall where they may" in hopes to escape and go to dreamland to perceive everything as bright, serene, and...fake. Sometimes its okay to dream, other times (or most the time) you have to get up and face reality.

Dream is a formulation of ambitions,ideals, and in some cases perception whereas reality is real. We as human beings have an innate desire to strive for our dreams. Here's the tricky part, life's purpose is to turn our wishful perceptions and turn them into reality. But what happens when instead of "living your dream" you are as a matter of fact "living in your dream"? 

Psychologists, Patrick Mcnamara addresses this issue and defines it as "false awakening" and when people go through this they are accompanied with an eerie feeling. "The eerie-ness is not surprising given that the experience undermines the belief we all usually have that we have direct contact with reality. It is certainly a shock to realize that you can be going about your day when in fact you are only dreaming." 

(For more: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dream-catcher/201106/dream-and-reality)

Daisy (from The Great Gatsby) is a perfect example of this. She fabricates her surroundings as if she were in a dream where all troubles are forgotten along with the truth. She happily cheats on her husband. Tom (given that Tom does as well, but that's not the point). She is happy with Gatsby and does not think ahead whereas Gatsby is sure that Daisy and him will get married. On the day of confrontation, Daisy is finally hit with reality and does not know what to do, as if she never actually "intended doing anything at all" (132 Fitzgerald). She dreamed of a life full of personal desires never thinking ahead to turn them into reality. but instead making her perception into reality.

                                     

Are you catching your dreams or are you fabricating reality?