I now remembered a time in my twenties when I had thought of how I would want my life to be after my husband retired. At the golf club, with umbrella-shaded tables on a deck with a view of the course, I would be seated, reading a book, while my husband played the first nine holes. Then we would have lunch. I wasn’t a golfer. But I would want us to spend time together at what he enjoyed.
Nineteen years later, now in a new living situation, I saw a stone cottage that was in full disrepair and hoped that I would someday be living there. So each day I brought a handful of flowers, pushing the stems through a bolt on the door adding to that hope.
Both of these thoughts were fantasies that I didn’t recognize as fantasies because I didn’t understand the meaning of “having fantasies.” Their occurring nineteen years apart showed how in that time I had made no progress in this area of self-awareness.* But by facing, identifying, and naming my fantasies, I broke the cycle.
On a recent night, visiting at the stone cottage, its original condition had been mentioned. Because of that I enjoyed, even more that night, its restoration to rustic character, and shared my fantasy for the first time, equally appreciating my new clarity of what is real.
My realization is, “In the process of rethinking our former selves, aging may bring discoveries of how we have changed for our improvement, giving new self-appreciation.”
* Fantasy is defined as imagining the impossible or the improbable, or believing in what has no basis in reality.