Vicarious: “… felt or undergone as if one were taking part in the experience or feelings of another…” real or imagined. The American Heritage Dictionary
Perhaps ‘vicarious’ is not a word you use but nevertheless the word most assuredly does identify any number of your most elaborate, impossible mental fantasies. It is the perfect escape mechanism that allows one to assume the role of any conceivable character or to participate in any real or imagined event not subject to the constraints of time, space and reality. It is the sign of a vivid imagination, maybe as a way to achieve something otherwise impossible except in one’s mind where there are no limits. It’s like a indescribable dream except the act is an achievement often remembered while being wide awake unlike the fuzzy recall of most dreams which are not ordinarily reliably retrievable. The experience is free, on demand, available to everyone even seniors but especially to the young not yet brain washed to think conventionally. So for example…
Every baseball player longs for the opportunity to come up to bat in a championship game, your team is behind, ninth inning, two outs and a full count on the batter with the winning runs on base waiting for the batter to do the near impossible, hit a home run, scoring four runs making a dream, a fantasy, come true. The likelihood of the conversion of these events to come about are remote in real life, but nothing is impossible for one living a ‘vicarious’ experience. While you are at it, it’s the World Series.
Perhaps the fantasy lived most often the eternal optimist is being the single ticket winner of the $500,000 lottery jackpot or what the heck, add a few more zeroes and make it a million of go for it, more zeroes and you become a billionaire overnight after all it’s a fantasy so there are no restrictions. Now what? Well the fantasy is just getting started. What would you do with that enormous amount of money? First of all, make lots of friends and discover lost relatives but after that? Pay off the mortgage, have a talk with your boss man (perhaps you might even become HIS boss man), become acquainted with people you previously knew only by reputation, your new CPA, attorney, banker. And you are just getting started because with such a bank account, surely you would want to help others, to do good, to make a difference in the lives of those who did not buy a ticket. And one other consequence: you have just experienced the LAST happy day of your life, sadly.
But departing from the negative, consider a fantasy (vicarious experience) of making a medical breakthrough, a cure for major illnesses that have defied medical science until you, by your groundbreaking research, come up with a cure (and a Nobel Prize) that would immeasurably benefit mankind and extend life expectancy by 100 years.
And while you are at it, come up with a way to bring peace and prosperity to everyone on earth.
Now what can you imagine?
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Bill Lee, PO Box 128,
Hamer, SC
