Similarities Between Gopnik's Essay 'The World And Other Places'

Counterfactual thinking and living in imagination is another aspect of life that distracts adults and children from their realities. These individuals get captured in their thoughts of how life should be or how things should go. By adults and children carefully planning out their future’s and how certain things should happen, it causes misery when their “blueprint” does not go as planned. In Jeanette Winterson’s essay “The World and Other Places”, she introduces characters who live their lives through their dreams and imaginations but have a hard time facing their truth. These characters were waiting for their dreams and imagination to re-invent their realities. She illustrates the drawbacks of living in a space that does not exist. Similarly, in Alison Gopnik’s essay “Possible Worlds: Why Do Children Pretend” she discusses how people live in a mindset of counterfactual thinking which are the “woulda-coulda-shouldas” of life. She argues the benefits of having insight and a blueprint of what someone wants to do in their future. Gopnik discusses the importance of an adult or child …show more content…
When someone continuously lives in a place that does not exist and plans every aspect of life around something that has not happen, when reality comes around it causes an individual to be stuck in a place of regret. Gopnik expresses the advantages of imagination and the importance of an individual having insight on the future. She presents the idea of the map and being able to change the blueprint of a person’s life through their imagination. Nonetheless, Winterson explores the disadvantages of why exploring the imagination in one’s mind can cause regret, low self-esteem and a person to be unhappy with themselves. Imaginations can be a happy place for many people, but it is not a space in which someone should dwell because it causes someone to be discontent with the here and