You have two lives. We all do. One is reading this. It’s the real world, engagement with others, perhaps a walk in the woods.

The other emerges as you awaken in the wee darkened hours. There is no sound. Your thoughts wander unimpeded in that liminal sleep/wake state. They are yours and yours alone, the product of three pounds of wetware. You are lord of your skull-sized kingdom as you survey your universe. That universe is an imagined one, distinct from any real one.

That power of imagination may encroach on those daytime hours, even that walk in the woods, when you are lost in thought i.e. your attention is redirected from the present state, to some past, to some future, to some elsewhere altogether. The experience might serve as a pleasant escape or otherwise suggest engagement in some deep contemplation e.g. ruminating on the nature of existence.

Then there is the level of rumination characterized by excessive, repetitive thinking, a kind of brooding that signals some emotional distress (click: Ruminating). Each of us can probably cite instances of the way regrets of the past or anxiety about the future temporarily dominated our thoughts as we drifted away from the present moment.

Snap out of it! The inability to do so teaches us, once again, how the mind can be a wonderful servant but a terrible master. That’s the lesson borne of isolation when we get all tangled up in our own underwear, within this imagined world. The antidote is pretty simple and basic, get out of your head, maintain connection with the real world lest you find yourself there on the outskirts of The Shining.

We might discuss this phenomenon in terms of the mental illness reportedly afflicting an entire generation wedded to the world of social media. One possible thesis is that a virtual life defined by the screen is barely distinguishable from the life of imagination, some festering illusory sense of self, along with a distant beckoning . . . . Here’s Johnny!