It is incumbent upon us as human beings to dream beyond what the reality of the moment in which we live is capable of imagining. Everyone knows by heart the litany of examples often employed to propel us toward a greater sense of what imagination, and its close companion perseverance, can lead us to do: the phonograph, the lightbulb, the telephone, the steam engine and railway systems in many countries, movies, movies with sound, numerous scientific experiments and theorems, and the creation of NASA and man's subsequent ability to explore, peer into, and to walk upon the surfaces of places that once only existed in the realm of human thought and imagination. The immense nature of any of these and many more accomplishments can never be downplayed or dismissed, and their varying geneses need to be studied in greater detail. Greater detail, however, often reveals great minds riddled with obsession, humans, who despite their admirable use of facts and knowledge to create change, could not maintain healthy relationships with other humans. It is commonplace to discuss the depth of great person's genius while at the same time outlining the decrepitude of his or her character. What happens to those who aspire to a greatness beyond that of the present? Does the need to be great come to overshadow the inherent ingenuity of the product or idea itself? Does the objective of the progenitor transform from one concerned with the good of the whole to one concerned with the good of the self? Does this change in objective serve to corrode the natural essence of an individual's character, embittering what once was sweet, or does the purity of the creation make any unpleasant ideological alterations within the creator more palatable?
First, I wish to address the three pathways one who desperately clings to a dream of any form can take: maintenance, derivation, or death.
1) Maintenance
This pathway is basically the same one you have travelled since the dream was planted in your mind and sowed its seeds into your heart. On this pathway the dreamer sees the ruts and footprints already created by his or her previous efforts. From time to time, the dreamer will trudge alongside these reminders hoping that the current struggles do not simply find their resting place parallel to the failures of before but rather far beyond and ahead of them. Sadly, however, the results of maintaining a dream that has not yet bore the desired fruits are oftentimes equal to the prior results. You may find that, in the end, you have occupied and continued deepening the tracks of your same mistakes. Maintenance of a dream in its original state, no matter the cost, can be a breeding ground for extreme self-loathing and anger.
In this stage the nobility of the dream can be obscured by the desire of the thinker to see it achieved. Now the dream is becoming entangled with the self-worth and perception of the person. The dream no longer moves forward by way of its value and worth to others but rather the dream is simply used as a banner, an identifier to lift up the wearer.
When the dream becomes something to be donned in order to embellish the exterior instead of as something each possessor can plant within themselves and allow to flourish through actions and deeds, the dream loses part of its essential character. If you continue to display the dream this way, no matter how much gold paint you apply to the outside, the dream will never shine from within and beyond. A dream should never be or become something that simply improves your image; a dream should allows have, at its core, the ability to be true for all, and have the purpose of moving all. A dream which is for the purpose of inflating the self is just an advertisement for a false product no one will purchase.
A dream built up for the purpose of elevating you will do nothing but minimize you and the dream you carry. A dream is not built and expanded due to the size (real or perceived) of the person who thought of it. A dream grows because of the multitudes of commonalities it finds with the minds and the hearts of other thinkers. Those thinkers beyond the originator are the ones who fearlessly defend and challenge its precepts. Those like-minds see it as it is and mold it into what it will be. A dream does not grow because of who you are. A dream grows because of what it is.
If a dream is only for you, it will always be a small, infertile seed. A ground fertilized with anger and envy will never cultivate bountiful harvests of hope, not even for one season. Envy is the weed that will invade and destroy your earth, sap it of all its nutrients. You will have moments where you are determined to suppress that plants with any and all other emotions, but you will unsuccessful because the weed will have taken root and spread its death grip. Planting in soil with even one weed present will poison what you plant. It will never rise above the height of the weeds. In you, envy will make you quick to anger. In you, envy will make you scornful of any success that you feel as if you should have garnered irrespective of the dream of the other person. You will feel that your dream needed that infusing of success just a bit more than your contemporary. Just like how a successful is made full and sustainable by the activity of others, you will need the help others to clear your land of any and all pernicious interlopers. Others will tend to your dream in your absence; therefore, new hope will reach high into the sky for seasons to come.
2) Derivation
Dreams, as with anything in life, can benefit from a steady routine of reflection and revision. Reflecting about a dream can help the dreamer to gauge how close he or she may be to bringing it to fruition. It can also help one to assess the present reality in which the dream exists. The inception of a dream and five minutes into its reality can represent to very different environments. This difference can often be attributed to the social sphere, support system, economy, and motivation of the dreamer. While any one or more of these factors can influence the success or failure of a dream, a dream can exist because of or in spite of the existence or nonexistence of any given circumstance. Dreams, whether we like to believe it or not, can be modifiable things.
In fact, the willingness to play with the form of dreams, like some hope-filled type clay to be made into anything, is probably indicative of future success in actualizing your dream. Reflection about a dream is not an admission that the original shape was flawed, but rather it is a laudable attempt to be very intimate with the product of one's hopes and desires. Reflection represents a willingness to try and fail in many given contexts in order to see which soil offers the most hope and food to the purpose of the dream, so that it can sprout and spring forth at the most opportune moment to spread, pollinate itself, and thrive in the environment of any moment. Revision is an acknowledgement that failures and flaws are more often than not predecessors of success. Revision, again, is not recognizing that the totality of the dream is bad; it is simply the process by which a dream's author can ensure that the dream lives and is promulgated in a state that can withstand time and its many tests.
Revision and reflection can help our dreams take root in reality more quickly because we have prepared the garden for their introduction. We have not been caring for them, feeding them with expectations too lofty to take hold of the bedrock. It has been shaped for its reality in which it will be. These dual tools can help the dreamer maintain his focus, personhood, and character irrespective of the eventual magnitude or marginality of what is being dreamed because the dream now lives independent of its dreamer.
3. Death
A dream is not the person who dreamt/dreams it, so the death of a dream is not the death of a person's worth. Try as one might, all dreams are not meant to become manifest, at least when we can be witnesses the riches they reap. The death of dream is not meant to be a moment of paralysis, but rather a moment of freedom and birth or re-birth for new opportunities for new or old dreams.
When a dream dies, the dreamer will cry. He will mourn what he has lost, and he will have to find a way to eulogize it. The eulogy will be the product of a deep well of indescribable wails, no words to be understood. They will be heard by none and felt by all. The pain will be unbearable. A soul pierced by the sharpest sword, to be followed by unending gushes and spurts of hope. A dreamer will vow to never dream again and cover himself in his bed sheets in the vain hope that oblivion will protect him from further pain. It will not work. Days, weeks, months, or years may pass, but you will dream again; hope will be replenished, and the cycle renewed. The ability to visualize that which is not there and make it be is what makes man/woman unique. Dreaming will never die as long as we cannot see what is beyond the horizon, and humans believe that we may have the answer to the question, what don't I see?
Beautifully put.
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