Reading and daydreaming

Lynne Sharon Schwartz

In her book Ruined by Reading, Lynne Sharon Schwartz recalls a woman commenting on those people who can stare at the same page of a book or newspaper for 15 minutes or more: "Don't you know? They're not really reading. It's their way of daydreaming, but they have to have the paper in front of them to justify it."

That's something most of us probably learned to do in school. As long as we were staring at an open textbook, we could daydream about anything we wanted to — the last recess, the next recess, being a superhero, an imagined relationship with the boy or girl on the other side of the room, whatever. It's a trick we never forget. With reading matter in front of us, we can daydream, worry, remember, plan or even eavesdrop on somebody else's conversation, and everyone will just assume we are reading — as long as we remember to turn the page now and then.

Yet reading and daydreaming connect to each other in another way, as well. Ideas tend to inspire other ideas. How many inventions, discoveries, scientific theories, novels, sermons, business plans, etc., have resulted from somebody reading and then daydreaming about that writer's ideas to create new ones? How many young readers have daydreamed about storybook heroes, then gone on to careers inspired by those daydreams?

Not all daydreams come true, of course. Most don't. That's why we call them dreams. Yet daydreams can often lead to something worthwhile, even if nothing more than a pleasant way to pass the time until the class bell rings.