Ok, I admit it…. I’m showing off!! But blame it on the music, as they say (who are ‘they’ and why do we take notice of them anyway…?)
Seriously though (awww!), you really can blame it on the music! As a music student one of the pieces I played as a teenager – round about grade 2 standard – was entitled Soliloquy. The first time I saw it I though, ‘OK, better check that one out before my teacher asks….’ and I dived for the dictionary.
Boiled down to a simple one-word explanation, a soliloquy is a day-dream! But doesn’t it sound so much more impressive when you are having a hard time with someone who is challenging your attention span when you can say with dignity “I was soliloquising!”. I used it to great effect at school – but could only get away with it once for each teacher!! My English teacher was so impressed, she set me an extra homework task to pontificate for 3 pages on a soliloquy!! (Damn – that one backfired!!)
Anyway, this week I was listening somewhat abstractedly to Classic FM – a lovely radio station in the UK which plays classical music in bite-sized chunks – and this particular piece of music came on and took me back to my not-so-happy school days. Remembering this particular essay that I had to write, I also recalled that I used it to explore the word and say it out loud a few times, rolling it around my mouth. (Does anyone else do that?) That essay got me thinking about day-dreams in a way I never had before, and I realised just how important day-dreams are in the big scheme of our lives.
If we don’t take time to day-dream, to be taken unexpectedly along a different thought path, to relax our minds so that they flit from topic to topic, to allow our minds to go totally blank and to stare with unfocussed eyes, to give our minds a breathing space in our chaotically busy lives, how can we recharge the batteries?
Of course, there are times and places to day-dream. I wouldn’t recommend it whilst driving the car on a particularly busy road, or anytime whilst driving the car, actually – although sometimes you find that you’ve driven a large stretch without remembering anything about it!
But time to just stare without focus, to sit without doing or watching anything, to lie down without the intention of going to sleep, to lean on a gate or a wall and just gaze without definite thought, is so important to our well-being that it should really be taught in school!
Even if it’s only for 5 minutes – just fit in time to day-dream today and you’ll find yourself refreshed and more relaxed. Here in the UK we have a bank holiday tomorrow. Why not just take some time to allow yourself to detach from the pressing day-to-day minutia of life and soliloquise for a few moments?
And anyone who interrupts you will be so impressed with the word, that they will leave you alone again!!