The joy of having an image in your head

“There are two kinds of travellers,” wrote the famous New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik in his first book, “There’s the kind who goes to see what there is to see and sees it and the kind who has an image in his head and goes out to accomplish it.” Although Adam wrote this about seeing Paris for the first time, this is true for our lives as it is for going abroad.

With all the talk about acceptance and avoiding resistance, people — and especially self-development writers — don’t talk enough about the value of having an image in our heads of how we want things to be in life.

They say, “It’s bad to have an image of an ideal relationship. It’s better to accept your partner as they are.” They also say, “It’s bad to have an image of your ideal life. Better take everything as it comes and be grateful for what you’ve got.” True, of course. But then, we shouldn’t diminish the satisfaction of realising our images in real life.

Of course, imposing your dreams on real-life isn’t always the best strategy. But you don’t have to choose between giving up on your goals and obsessively trying to play them out in real life. You can find the golden middle: where you have a vague image of what you want to happen (how you want to be treated by your partner, how much money you want to make, where you want to live, so on), and you patiently, slowly, move towards that image, without putting too much force or pressure on yourself.