My Best Imaginary Day – a Quarantine Survival Tip
My 6 year old nephew Rowan has a tradition at our family meals—he likes to be the conversation leader by enthusiastically asking, “Tell me about your day!” So we go around the table, some of us telling exactly what happened: “I went to the gym, then to work, and had lunch with an old friend.” Others embellish a bit: “While I was driving I stopped at a red light and saw an elephant crossing the road!” This gets a big blue eyed face (that will melt you!) followed by a “wait, wait… what?! How big was the elephant? Where did he come from? Did he fit in the crosswalk?!”
The best part of the conversation is when it’s Rowan’s turn. Last night I asked him how his day was, and I expected to hear all about home school and playing on the trampoline. Instead he said, “I had the best imaginary day ever! I went to Disneyland and went on ‘dancing cars’ (aka. The Rollickan Roadsters ride). Then I went to Hawaii and splashed Fordy (his younger brother) in the pool.” Later I asked my sister-in-law about his imaginary day to which she replied, “Yep, all the kids got an imaginary day today. The home school quarantine days are really getting to them. Rowan describes quarantine as stupid and horrible!”
I’ve since thought about the brilliance of having an imaginary day. Don’t we all need one, especially with quarantines affecting the better part of the world? For me, 8 weeks into COVID19 is a time where all my days are blending together—where producing the same amount of work takes 10X the discipline; where talking to any human (I get excited at the drive-thru window!) feeds my extrovert soul; and where isolation with no end date is a place I cannot let my mind wander. My colleagues experience quarantine as limited, caged, unable to thrive, etc. We all miss comforts like our gym, restaurants, movie theaters, and travel. I’ve never been so healthy, yet so confined.
Imaginary days are one of the brilliant survival strategies Anthony Ray Hinton used when he found himself innocently on death row. In his mind, “Hinton flew to England to visit Buckingham Palace and have tea with the queen, he ate dinner with the most beautiful women in the world, he won Wimbledon five times, the New York Yankees recruited him to play baseball, he married actress Halle Berry, but then divorced her to marry Sandra Bullock.”
Clearly our minds benefit from leaning into our imagination, even if only for a few minutes. Where will you travel to, who will you meet, where will you eat? An imaginary day may be some of the best medicine we can give ourselves. Lean into your inner kid and see where ten minutes can take you. Who knows, maybe we’ll all meet Rowan in Radiator Springs. ;)
