“We are such stuff/As dreams are made on.”–William Shakespeare, The Tempest
We all live in and for dreams. When we are young, we dream of growing up and doing all kinds of wonderful things. As children, we dream of birthdays, Christmases, and special days like Halloween or Easter, and all the pleasant treats and gifts associated with such positive occasions. As Shakespeare suggested, we are pretty much hard-wired to dream and lead dream-like lives.
Think of the many who dream of the details of imagined weddings, marriages and families that signify perfect fulfillments of various imagined kinds of love. Think of the many who dream of physical accomplishments and doing heroic deeds to fulfill their talents and dreams of proving themselves or helping others. For, regardless of how brief dreams last or how disillusioned dreamers may become, they, more often than not, hold fast to a firm belief in dream`s potentials and possibilities.
“I dream, therefore I become.”–Cheryl Renee Grossman
“Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live
in dreams?”–Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Higher Pantheism’
In fact, we spend much of our lives in dreams whether asleep or awake. Dreams are what motivate, drive, and sustain us whether we are planning a special trip, choosing a home, or buying lottery tickets. Our dreams keep us going, hoping, and believing that our lives will someday acquire more meaning, purpose or fulfillment. Usually, too, they are far more interesting than what passes for often humdrum or limited/limiting reality.
It is not uncommon either for us to kid ourselves about how realistic and practical we are as we chase the given dream of the moment or day. But what is it that makes life worthwhile if not the possibilities of dream? Nowhere is that more obvious, perhaps, except in relationships. Seen a certain way, relationships are nothing more than mutual/ly/shared dreams, values, and interests.
Imagine two separate people who share an interest in a long list of things: dogs, walking in nature, travel to interesting places, books and reading, music and painting, writing and creativity, good food and conversation, and certain attitudes toward life and its possibilities. Is it not likely that what they may need, miss, want, or potentially benefit from is nothing more than the dream of living and loving the same way with someone else?
In such cases where there is mutuality and sharing of dreams in the form of a couple or a relationship, there is great potential to satisfy, perhaps, the deepest needs of mind, heart, soul, as well as the physical. Indeed, when dreams mesh and are actualized or realized, it can be said that dreams really can and do sometimes come true. Certainly, those relationships, which were once based on mutual and shared dreams of the life and the world, often come to an end when those dreams no longer overlap or `breathe` in any tangible, proven way.
Dreams, then, nibble deeply away at and inform our lives in the proof of living. At their best, we may be lucky to live in them and reality simultaneously. And perhaps some of the most fascinating experiences are those delightful, magical ones in which we cannot clearly separate one from the other.
“I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.”–Chuang Tse
………………………………………………………………………..
One more prose exploration of dreams, more focusedly, on dreams and relationships. I will let this one speak for itself without further examples and illustrations.