We humans have long been fascinated by the fact that when we dream there is movement, sound, color (some of the time), objects, taste, feel and smell. The “stuff” of dreams is as real as that which one is experiencing when not dreaming. One can live a lifetime in a few minutes of dreamland. Many have argued about how we “know” or think we know the difference between the reality, which is our dreams, and the reality, which we share.
Prospero in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” says:
Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158
Some have argued that, for Shakespeare, this was a metaphor for the illusionary permanence of life itself. It is always fleeting- that even this shared reality is but a fleeting moment. We can rebuild the buildings destroyed by the events of September 11 but those new building will they only be present for a moment in time. As others have noted, Shakespeare has Prospero saying “As dreams are made on…” and not “As dreams are made of…” The former alludes to the mythical rock on which dreams are built- the mythical permanence.
We also use dreams to imagine what could be. Thoreau reminds us: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.”
Mark Twain reminds us that “Twenty years from now you will be disappointed more by the things you did not do than by the ones you did do.”
I was thinking of this last evening while listening to Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air interview D. Watkins the co-author of The Beast Side -Living And Dying While Black in America by D. Watkins and David Talbot. Mr. Watkins talks about moving from a life of the loneliness of being a drug dealer to Baltimore to now looking forward in the spring of 2017 to teaching English at Goucher College. If one just knew of the life of Mr. Watkins before he not only earned a bachelor’s degree, but before he got a master’s degree in education from John Hopkins University and a master’s of fine arts from the University of Baltimore, it would be easy to think of him as a throw away person – a person who was not a dream waiting to be born and who did not dream of emulating. This was a man who grew up in a neighborhood in which it was difficult to find anyone whose mother or father (or both) had not previously or currently used drugs to escape. It was a community which took the life of his brother; a community in which 15 and 16 year old kids could make $10,000.00 a week and, of course, lose it and their life even quicker. It was a community which was a non-community. As Mr. Watkins says, “…selling drugs is not a team activity. It is a one-on-one activity. “ It is a community in which life is as fleeting as the dreams and nightmares which happen in a flash while we momentarily visit that world which we call sleep.
Yet, out of this world or perhaps out of a rejection of this world, Mr. Watkins enrolls in a college and discovers another dream occupied by a more diverse group of people – diverse in terms of color, education, background, thoughts, race and age. It is a world in which the dreams are different and, yet, not different. Certainly it is a world which can at least dream of teamwork; a world of the Martin Luther Kings or the Donald Trumps or future corporate greed. It is a world in which there is the possibility of we, but also the possibility of an ongoing dream of solitary survival.
I kept listening during the interview of Mr. Walkins by Terry Gross for the event, person or alien spirit which triggered or perhaps fed the new dream of Mr. Watkins. If he mentioned it, I did not catch it but somewhere in his despair he could imagine another life, which motived him to take a risk.
I am often struck by the term motivated. I have often been in professional treatment situations in which my colleagues have said of one or more clients/patients, “They are not motivated to get well. They do not care. “ Those statements make me sad. I think what is really going on is that the person(s) about whom they are talking has not dared to dream a different dream. Actually it is more about those of us who have “signed on” to work for/with those coming from a life of addiction to drugs, money, sex, power or whatever); those who are afraid that without the momentary high they will be alone, disconnected and without any possibility of joy. It is not that they do not want to have a different dream. I may not know what to do to open that window of hope. I have seen that window of hope open when some teacher, friend, poet, writer, artist, musician was able to touch into the heart of the hopeless one – the dreamless one. One can always detect the spark that has been lit. Indeed, it may be barely discernable and not even yet identifiable by the person in whom the dream is being birthed. Yet, we need to notice it; to trust that in every one of us there is a place within us that his just waiting to be lit.
Perhaps, occasionally the dream emerges immediately as a flame, but I think that most often it begins with a tiny spark. We may not notice it until it is a flame but our dream as for each other needs to be that we can find in each other that spark which will allow us to accept the possibility that “It is not because things are difficult that we not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult (Seneca Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD)
Written October 2, 2015
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