"Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?" Alfred Loyld Tennyson
Traveling through life without dreams must be a very horrible place. I can't imagine what that must feel like. I have been a dreamer most of my life. I have had pockets of time when I didn't dare dream, but for the most part...a dreamer.
Dreams are not limited to night time slumbers. The best dreams are those that fill our waking hours, that we construct out of possibility, hope, prayers, and desires. Those that we put great thought into...those are the one's that can change our lives. And, they can be the most damaging.
Up until a few years ago, I played softball a couple of times a week, at least. I love the game. I can't express the joy I have chasing a fly ball in the outfield or driving a ball into the gap in left. It's alway been a passion...since I was a child. Even with my hitch. In the last years that I played regularly, I knew that things were changing for me. I could still hit the ball and put it in play regularly. I could still field and throw a gun to the plate from behind second base. But, I wasn't stretching any doubles into triples anymore. I was barely stretching doubles into doubles. I knew that my wheels just weren't carrying me as quickly as they used to. But, in those moments...when pulling from down deep for energy, speed...when trying to turn that last corner to score from second...just for those briefest of moments...I was flying. I was practically airborne. And the wind in my face told me it was true. And I believed it. I really believed it...just for a moment.
I know in my heart it wasn't true. I knew that I didn't look like a cripple. I just wasn't dazzling anyone with my speed anymore. But, for those moments...I believed. Until I turned around. And the 25 year old that had hit the ball that sent me from second to the plate was scoring a few seconds behind me. He rounded four in the time it took me to get two. And then...at that moment...the dream started to dissipate in the fog of it's creation. I had dared to reach out and touch it. And in doing so, when reality started to push through the other side...the dream became smoke and floated away. But, I still had those few moments. In my heart, I had those moments.
Dreams are like that. So real when we have them squarely in our vision. As long as we just sit and enjoy. As long as we don't try to engage. As long as we don't ask it to prove itself. It lives. But, if we reach out...with the quivering fingers of the hopeful...and we dare to try to touch the edge, for no other reason than to feel the wonder...it starts to break up right in front of our eyes. It becomes a memory based on nothing but imagination.
Daytime dreams...awake dreams..they stay with us. Against the rule of dreams, they remain in our memory banks. There is a reason that our dreams in sleep tend to be quickly forgotten once we are awake. We were never meant to remember them. We were given a few moments of fantasy...some sweet and nice, some frightening...and we carried them in our unconscious state of being to a place that only a mind that has let go of all normal function of an awake body can go. It releases the imagination that we all. It's like a muscle...there to be flexed. And as we awake, for some that muscle shuts down..and the dream recedes leaving very little trace in our memory banks. The reason is for salvation and survival. The brain does one thing very, very well. When functioning correctly, it is constantly on survival mode. And it knows, those things that are imagination is allowed to run wild with are not safe to be kept in memory to be confused with reality. Our ability to imagine is too powerful. Too easy to sway us to believe that fantasy is reality. That we are living our dreams.
Dreaming in real time is not a bad thing. It just has to be taken with the huge grain of salt that it requires. It will take those of us that can flex that amazing imagination muscle in our awake hours and it will give us many gifts, sights, and visions. And, as long as we don't attempt to interact with them, they will allow us to manipulate them with that muscle,to entertain us as things in real time change. We can set the dream to react to what is going on around us...or what we think is going on around us.
But, the desire to believe is very strong. We want to know that the dream is possible. That if we can dream it, we can be it. And sometimes that is true, but it's less about dreams and more about fate. Because, those of us that are referred to as dreamers know...to try to grasp the dream is the end of the dream. And even with that knowledge, we are human. Emotions get strong...feelings become overpowering...desire takes over.
And we reach.
We reach with our shaking, shy, scared hand...and we stretch...and our fingers pop from the joints...trying just to stroke the edge of the vision that has enticed us to an never before attained sense of self...sense of need...sense of life...and the dream...the dream, it fades. Like ripples reaching the shoreline and losing their purpose to be, the dream folds into itself and drops away from our sight, taking with it our tears, our desires, and our hearts.
And we learn again, just how easy it is to get confused. When we are dreaming...in real time.
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