I'm a dreamer. Not one of those head in the clouds kind of dreamers, but someone who has vivid and lifelike dreams on a nightly basis. Sometimes they're scary and too vivid to shake when I wake up in the morning. Sometimes it takes me half the day to recover from a particularly sad dream and there's a dark cloud over most of my day when that happens. When the dream is really good and makes me happy, sometimes it's hard to wake up and realize that it never really happened.
There are things that I don't have the courage to dream about in real life because they're just too big. Fear keeps me from pursuing them and keeps me in the safety of this cocoon I've wrapped myself in. But sometimes I dream about them at night and for a few hours live the life I've always wanted, even if it's only while I sleep.
This is one of my favorites quotes...mostly because it's about dreaming big. Dreaming confidently. Making those dreams happen. In my dreams last night, all the best ones came true. My most secret and precious dreams were lived out and I got a taste for what life like that might be like. This morning I woke up determined not to be afraid of these dreams. I woke up with conviction to live my dreams out loud. To move confidently in their direction because living them for a only a few hours a night is no longer good enough for me...like Thoreau, I don't want to die having never really lived.
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived...I learned this at least from my experiment...that if one advances confidently in the directions of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
~Henry David Thoreau
Thursday, May 11, 2006
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7 comments:
I am one of those people who don't dream, I mean the while youare asleep kind. Maybe once a year I remember 5 seconds of a dream, having no idea what the dream is actually about, consider yourself fortunate to have such vivid dreams.
I have very vivid dreams. Often times when I am experiencing difficulty in life I'll have recurring dreams (some good, some REALLY bad). For a period of time I even became capable of lucid dreaming.
I hope the memory of your dream helps you to stay on its path, and that when you need reassurance, the dream becomes recurring. Good luck.
You just made this English teacher's day. Thoreau is one of my favorites. This is a beautifully written post.
Wow, Steph! It's a brave person that confronts their fears like this. I admire that in you. I've seen glimpses of this coccoon, I think. I will be here to root you on as your friend, if that helps.
My dreams are too real...sometime freakishly real...but I won't even get into that!
Love this post!
Unfortunately a paradox lurks. If you try and live for your dreams, and if Freuds interpretation of dreams as wishfulfilment is true, then as you fail to move towards your dreams by day, you will make up for it by dreaming that you are dreaming by night. A good dead friend of mine reached this stage. He had recursive dreams where in his dream he would fall asleep and dream of falling asleep and dreaming of falling asleep and dreaming of falling asleep and dreaming, and at the bottom of this bottomless pit he dreamed that he strangled himself to death.
wonderful post! :)
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