"Hello Fantasies!"

You are seated there staring at the wall, not actually serious about anything but just allowing a fulfilling emptiness to yell at you. You are unknowably moving from one side of the chair to another, or your hands, or feet or head, are obeying your mind in a way you would not want to confess exists - in a rather out-of-this-world kinda way. Your consciousness is somewhere between awareness and curiosity; between expectancy and anxiety...
You are in a fixed state and warring on in it with pomp and valor. While in that place of your "great" life, you are probably smiling sheepishly and having this goody-goody feeling about something - something you don't know, but are pretending to know and like, err, something you are loving so much. That something seems so real yet so unreachable. And because it is making you feel jilted and edgy, you keep on seating there and smiling, and obviously, someone looking at you would say that you are excited, are in a hysterical hyperbole and that you are enjoying every moment of it. Why? They can see it in the immense brightness of your eyes, the glittering of your outer countenance and, you look like you have found new love: you know how people look like after finding new love, right? Yeah, you look that way.
Seemingly, you are lost. You are lost in the combined angsts of your heart and mind which are combing through you and making you look lost and too happy.
Maybe, just maybe, you have been sitting (or "sleeping") there for a while already. And while seated/sleeping there, this is what is happening: you have probably "met" this hawt guy or lady who has swept you off your feet (literally). You've chatted them up and you feel interested. You now have a date scheduled out and have gotten dressed up to kill (literally) - for the date. You've looked up yourself in the mirror, done those face gestures and happy ninja moves that are your legendary trademark of, "Yeah, um looking cool, ain't I? I've got an animal to kill, yaaay!!" So, unknowably (again), in the real world, you are now smiling and tossing and turning on that chair or bed of yours... Back to your world: you've stepped out of the house with this swing vote look you always wear to mean, "I'm all this sweet and important, you know!?".
Mmmmmmmh...
You've gotten to the date venue, and, OH MY GOD! you've just had such an oooooooowesome date: Ooooooh! The arrangement! The beauty! The romance! You soooo feel that you're in love.
Meanwhile, you've dated this dude/dudette (dudine?) several other times (while right there on your chair or bed) and have gotten married: the wedding is off the chains - somewhere in Dubai or is it Durban or in the Caribbean... Barbados maybe? ;)
Okay. You've now come back home after the aaaaaaawwww!!! wedding (some guy says I shouldn't do that) and you and your "boo" now have these two soooo cute babies...
Mmmmmmmh... And you've given those babies really cute names... and they are now crying... they're crying really loud and you don't like it... that's when you wake upppp...!! Grrrrrr!!! Reality is still yelling at ya! ;) You realize that you are just on your chair/bed in your clumsy diggs. Nothing has really changed: there is no hawt dude/dudette, there are no dates (not even promising ones), no wedding, no sunshine on a beach... it is just a lonely you seated there wallowing in your hidden world... so you end up feeling bad and may choose to go back to "sleep"...
Or, ION,...
You are in school, it's your graduation day: you now have a degree... Oh my! You're having this tingly feeling you can't put on paper... so you together with your self-enfranchised buddies have organised this great get-together party and everyone that shrills in your life is there. You're feeling like yelling because, well, you are planning to propose to your "long time" girlfriend today in the so-called after party. Guy, you're feeling like a pumpkin amongst water melons! The day goes on as planned: people smile, guys laugh, the music is great [and sentimental], life is sooooo musical in that day - it is like it is singing to you; people give you gifts and say these well rehearsed sweet nothings, kisha they go away. *Sigh!* This is the moment you've been waiting for, right?   Ouch! You're now tipsy-ish (in the sense of emotion) and are ready for the evening date with your chiq (someone looking at you in the real world sees you turn about on that chair with a jolt), but, well, but... it seems that you never managed to travel with all your senses to that sweet world of yours, because, well, you can smell your tea in the real world on that gas cooker over there "burning"... so, voila! Aaaaaargghhh!! Your dream partially ends...
In short, you are fantasizing. Yes my friend, you are swallowed up in the fantasy world...
The reality of fantasies is so heavy in our world today. We seem to have gotten used to it. We even enjoy it. In fact, psychoanalytic research puts the number of people who fantasize (at least on a daily basis) at 9 out of 10. Which means that there is a very high possibility that each one of us fantasizes or daydreams daily. 
Psychological studies mostly bring out fantasizing as a symptom to most personality disorders - something which we may deny if told that it is part of us, but it is true - even though I ain't becoming some kind of doctor on this one.
Okay. Lemme throw away the psycho-bla bla card and come back to our world...   
As we've seen above, fantasies are normal. Maybe what we need to look at is the risk of our predisposition to them, because their occurrence is simple:
They arise when our desires start growing up in us with the support of our minds. Our minds pick up messages from the longing in our hearts and start creating images when we are in a status of "a paused consciousness of our immediate environment." These mind-images begin existing independently in our mind-world (formulated and created by our thoughts) and later begin acquiring faces and places, values and principles to a perfection that may be hard to override.
At the beginning, those images of our "dream world" are vivid and blurred, but with time, and when we allow it, these images start becoming real: they become so real that their existence in our lives is now tangible and unavoidable...
There's something about these mind- images (fantasies) though: they are not imagination(s). This is because imagination bases its strengths on wonder, awe and a longing to understand things; while fantasies base their strength on wishes, overrated desires and unrealistic expectations. Fantasies don't have wonder in them but a certain type of longing which if not well controlled, may be harmful to the host's relational life, thus becoming a personality disorder as described above. They seek to overdo and overemphasize certain aspects and qualities in people, things or situations. And sometimes, all these aspects and qualities are not possibly achievable in one person or instantaneous situations or things.  
Fantasies are a great fuel to shattering relationships that were otherwise doing well, and may also lead to the single person or single parent to remain "unattached", due to one comparing their partner (or potential partner) to the inbuilt mind-images of what the "right" partner has been conceived to be or to look like.
It has been proven that we mostly use fantasies as an escape way and a relief from the reality of lacking the things we would so much want to have in the real world - like in our relationships, leadership structures (in our organizations, families and nation), in our marriages, schools and working places... We use them as excuses and avenues to our own world - a world that only exists in our hearts and minds, and this causes us to set even higher standards for ourselves and those around us.
Although this makes us mostly dissatisfied and unsatisfied with life and what we meet and get thus shredding our levels of contentment (something God would so much want us to have), fantasies have some positive side to them too - the aspect of having a desire, a goal and a target to live for due to the longing, and may help in generating hope if channeled to the right direction.
Most of the good things we desire and want so bad (and end up fantasizing about) like good jobs, great families, a good nation, good girlfriends (read: Mrs Right) and good boyfriends (read: Mr Right) are victims of how our hearts and minds construe or misconstrue the realities and facts around us.
A possible solution to this problem may be to:-

1.      Look at one's self and gauge if one's expectations of others are genuine or overrated, and therefore guide their thinking in proportion to what others are able to do in their day to day relational lives.

2.     Look deeper at one's self and ask yourself these simple questions: "Am I being realistic? Am I being too overrated? Are these things possible in my world? Are these expectations of mine in line with the will of God upon my life?" When one starts looking at life with a rational mind, one is moved to differentiate between possibilities and dreams.

3.     Be keen enough to compliment and appreciate the few good things in the people around us. Not all people (read: men or women or leaders or country) can be serially bad. You, err, we need to learn to sacrifice and understand people as they really are and stop being obsessed with creating people into "what we want them to become." Fact: we can NEVER change anyone. We should leave that to God!

4.     Stop complaining of the little or minor inconsistencies one may be meeting daily in their lives and start appreciating every little thing they have (and meet) as a gift from God.

All I can say as my last word on this is: don't be too over your heels. Live life in moderation, think moderately and know that people are soooo different... and their lives are soooo different too.
Don't allow yourself to be stressed up for nothing: for a course that is nonexistent! You deserve a stress free life that appreciates the things you see and have... 
No one can ever be the same person or an equal replica of that person you keep seeing in your fantasies but we can just be who we are and what God created us to become... Give us a break by being real!
And by the way, this post is speaking to me more than it may even be speaking to you...

Have a great weekend guys!!



Bonface Morris.