Can a heart capture true joy without dreaming? Can a soul soar to heaven without imagination? Dreaming eventually enters the realm of risk takers and daredevils. To dream is to have an uncommon faith in something bigger, greater, unknown and uncontrollable. Dreaming is to reach higher, farther and without eagerness. Dreaming is wanting and imagination coupled. Children dream easily. We dream of being astronauts or ballerinas. We have amazing teachers, like Mrs. Dorfeld in 3rd grade who tell us we will grown up to be the 1st female president of the United States. Our friends do penny drops beside the PE courts and the tether ball poles and all boys have cooties. Inside sleeping bags we whisper our dreams to our best friend. We hide from big sisters or parents, lying flat on our backs watching clouds roll overhead, the graffiti covered water tower stands sentry over our flights of fancy. We scream our wishes as we plunge 40 feet into the canal at Snoden’s. Dreams came so easy then. Certainly there were freak tragedies: a horrific hunting accident and a first funeral, a car accident that sent friends to the ICU, a suicide. All serve to fuel bigger dreams. Survivor guilt? Homage?
Responsibility and obligation, unless in service to a dream, weaken it. They can starve a dream. How do you resuscitate a dream or is there a circumstance when one must be willing to sign a DNR? Bury one dream to give birth to another. Dream recycling or composting. A dead dream rots away into something of great value, a loam fertile and hearty enough for a fresh planting. It is sad to consider that one dream must die in service to another, but that is better than dying unfulfilled and without use.
The universe conserves energy. It is supernatural but this realm is not magical. Something cannot be made from nothing. Likewise, something cannot be destroyed, not totally. Rather, it is converted; it evolves; it is hybridized. Like grafting flowers or trees, a new thing can be born from the combination of other things that were never hardy enough to thrive. In that logical, well-reasoned scientific project, the scientist hopes for a new color of rose. He dreams of pluots, apriums and plucots. The remnant of dreaming in the world of reason.
