In my last post, I posed the wrong question when I asked why do we let our dreams die.
To say our dreams die ignores the fact that to die, something must first live, it must exist: very few of us get this far.
Tracking the battle played out within his song I Want a Dog, after seeing the dreams of Hobo Johnson succumb to the reality of Frank, the man behind the Hobo moniker, I was left wondering why we all settle for less than what we want.
Why we recongize our desires, label them as pure fantasy, and disregard any possiblity of creating a reality for them to exist.
I don't think our dreams ever die, I think our dreams never exist.
Dreams are slotted into two different understandings.
The images that play in our minds while we are fast asleep: our subconscious running amuck as it is not held back by the reins of reality.
The larger than life, grandiose, ideas we hold in our minds: the longing for a life we do not have or cannot perceive in our current reality.
Though the form differs, both understandings of our dreams are marred by the reality we attempt to subvert. Regardless of if you are wide awake or fast asleep, your dreams remain detached from the reality you exist.
Held in a paradox, to be a dream, your mind must simultaneously accept reality will subdue your dream's attempt to alter the real while also believing your dream is the outlier which will see itself to realization.
For what makes a dream a dream is the quality that it does not exist, but the hope that it might.
Dreams lie just outside of the real, tangible enough to be conceived by the mind, yet ever-so fantastical that when a dream inevitably fails to force itself into true existence, nothing is really lost: our world remains the same.
Yet, when we fail to actualize the outlandish ideas of the mind, we still feel the emotional pangs rooted far beyond an intangible idea: our very being is racked by the perceived failure to live the life we silently clung to when alone.
To talk of dreams and not call upon Christopher Nolan's Inception would be a deep crime I am not willing to commit.
Early in the film, fending off the projections of the subconscious they have invaded, Tom Hardy's character, speaking to Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character who is armed with an assault rifle, tells him he must dream a bit bigger as he brings forth a grenade launcher.
Though meant to be a moment of comedic relief from the perplexing nature of entering someone's dream and having capabilities far beyond those in reality, in a moment of irony, what Hardy's character highlights is where I think many people fail to allow their dreams to live.
Like the grenade launcher, dreams are larger than life, they seem impossible: so far removed from reality that we lack the ability to conceptualize just how to make them a part of our reality.
The very nature of the dream is what causes the dream to never exist, yet for some this is not the case.
In our minds inability to bring to fruition that which lingers in our subconscious, we look to the real we can see: we look to the world around us for examples, forgetting that the very nature of a dream would mean it does not exist in the world we inhabit.
If we could simply step outside and find the example we so craved to create, what we seek would not be a dream: to find your dream in reality negates the possibility of it truly being a dream.
Life is a painting not a mirror.
In the same way we would not walk into an art museum with an easel to copy a painting and claim it as our own, we should not look at someone else's life, copy it, and claim it as our own. However, in seeking examples of our dreams in the real world, this is what we do.
We look to what others have created and create a cheap imitation of someone else's life in our attempt to bring our dreams into existence.
The life of another will never reflect back the reality of oneself: my life will not be yours and yours will not be mine, so to look for our dreams in the lives of others is a fruitless affair.
Life provides inspiration, it does not provide examples.
In the world we may find the muse which will spur our soul's longing for something beyond the real, yet we will never find the satisfaction to this longing.
This is the first reason I think many of us fail to bring our dreams to existence.
We look to the world for an example of how to bring our dreams to reality, and, when an example is not provided, we sit and wait.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
The questions that plagued Langston Hughes in his poem Harlem, played out by Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun, are the same questions that linger in the very beings of us all.
What happens to my unfulfilled dreams?
Yet, the answer is pretty simple.
No, it does not dry up or not fester.
It cannot run.
It holds no smell, weight, or combustible matter at that.
A dream deferred is not left behind to rot, or crust, but is simply forgotten.
A dream's existence is fleeting: it arrives as flash in the darkest moments of our lives and disappears with the same slow, yet noticeable dissipation, as the room fades to black again.
In our minds attempt to capture that which is not real, we attribute our understandings of the physical word to that which is not of the physical world.
Some are able to capture the lightning in a bottle and seize hold of the immaterial light to illuminate their surroundings, yet for some, the light does not need to be captured: only enjoyed as a brief moment of relief from the real.
Though some do make their dreams a reality, for others, there is a happiness that is fulfilled in the visualization of their fantasy. A dream does not need to exist in the real sense for it to bring the relief we associate with the musings of the mind.
Yet we are restless beings.
We can only sit for so long as the light fades before the emotions that inhabit the same space as our dreams, real enough to force action, but immaterial and never completely understood, begin to beat the inner walls of our chest and ribs, aching in the continued contentedness of our inaction.
However, in a deep irony, the emotions that spur action are the second reason we fail to bring our dreams to existence.
We seek out advice.
Yet, advice rarely makes itself malleable material.
As we look to the world to provide examples for our dream's ability to be real, we look to those we know to provide the steps we need to bring our dreams into existence.
Always well intentioned, what we receive are never the steps we should take, but the steps that person would take. But that person can never serve as an example for our dreams as that person
Is not living our dream.
Is basing their beliefs in the reality which does not currently contain the dream we wish to live.
This easily is what killed my dreams between entering college and now.
I think too much. I am over analytical. I ask my mom. I ask my friends. I research. I scour. I sit in a frozen panic of having to ultimately make a choice, so I hope my friends will tell me what they would do. I hope my mom will give me some sage wisdom. I hope the internet will provide me someone who has gone through what I am trying to solve or tell me what steps I need to take.
Yet in all of this searching, I cause myself more issues. Rarely do I want to do what someone else tells me, so I am left even more frustrated than before. I do not know what to do, and I feel isolated in the failure of those around me to tell me what to do.
However, it is easier to fall back on options that have a path already paved.
There is a comfort in knowing what is likely to come, and, if things go wrong, we can shift the blame onto another and their thought process.
But when this failure is realized, and the blame is shifted, we become locked in the state of hopelessness as we feel no one can help us. This is notably different from our inability to actualize our dream as we sit and wait for an example.
Here, as hopelessness sets in, we give up on the wife who loves to talk about her days, a nice house, with a great community, a kid who is a musical prodigy, and our talking dog: instead we settle for just a dog.
And when we have this dog, we place upon it the burden of all we left behind. Though the dreams themself never existed, because we choose to forgo the dreams in the choice to manifest our them in something else, in this case a dog, we live forever reminded of that which we now seemingly can never have.
This dog becomes the scarlet letter, the green sash, the mark upon which we see our hopelessness realized.
And as this dogs roams our homes and apartments, we are left to care for it, to clean up after it, to assure its survival for not only is it a living being, but to disregard the dog would be a decision to disregard the dreams we gave up on, and though we have failed to truly live out what we want, the choice to let our dreams now die, is more painful than to have not let them have come to exist at all.
I do think I want a dog, but I also know I want the same list of things Hobo wants yet Frank refuses to let himself have.
I want a wife who loves to talk about her days and is super talented in what she does.
I want a nice house, with a great community that shares similar interests as me.
I want a kid who can teach me things and have an impact on the world.
I want the best that life has to offer, better than anyone has had.
I want to be dead, yet still loved and respected.
I want to laugh.
I want a dog.
Yet to have these desires and search for the example of them lived out in this world is futile.
For what I want, the dreams that I have, have not been brought forth in this reality we all exist.
Life provides inspiration, it does not provide examples.
Far too many of us seek comfort in the security of the tested and proven hoping we can be the outlier that miraculously changes the path.
Yet as Shakespeare wrote:
Security is mortals' chiefest enemy.
When we look to the world for an example and seek out the advice of others, we believe that for some reason we are different: we believe we are the outlier whose fortune will be different from those before.
Which leads to my final reason why I think we fail to bring out dreams to existence.
We do not act on our belief that we are different.
Inside, we all know we are different.
However, we seem to lose sight of this fact as we seek validation of our differences in the perceived similarities with others.
We quell the fire inside that drives us to dream of leaving our hometown, starting a new job, launching a business, or putting the slightest step outside of the box we perceive we all exist, reality.
Our similarities, yes, hold us together, but it is our differences that bring us to the forefront: it is our differences that allow us to be who we are.
The issue is that many of us believe our differences force us to be outcasts, removed from the box that the larger collective find comfort.
Yet, being outside of the box, outside of the reality everyone exists in, is what allows you to look upon the world and see how you can in fact bring your dreams into existence.
In your differences, you are not an outlier, but a pioneer.
Waiting for an example to come, seeking others validation for the steps you are to take, finding shame in your differences, these are all reasons we fail to bring our dreams into existence.
For if we are truly dreaming, we will not find what we are looking for by doing the easy work of plagiarizing someone else's life.
A dream can only be brought into existence if we create a reality for it to exist in.
Yet, simply by dreaming we start the process of creating the world needed for our dreams to exist.
Simply by dreaming do we acknowledge that we desire a life different than what we see or have experienced.
By dreaming do we allow ourselves to fully be present to the person we are: we do not allow what is real, what we see, what we are told, to stifle that which our mind believes is the life we want to have.
And the wildest thing is, when you think no one is modeling what you need, and you dare to step into that for yourself, you will find the room crowded with comrades, with bright eyes and high fives and "You, too?" It's the best feeling in the world. The feeling of God saying, "Hah, my love, you thought I was so small." - Jedidiah Jenkins
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