Dreams and the Storm

I do not believe that most people understand dreams. Not the kind where people sleep, and have strange adventures in wierdly connected pieces of their lives. Not the oddities of the subconscious. No. Rather, the passion that drives us, that final destination we all wish to reach. What is it that defines this? What is a dream, and how do we pursue it, much less find it? Many authors have had their say on it. One of my personal favorites, Sherwood Anderson wrote in his masterpiece, "Winesburg, Ohio" about all the small lessons that we all learn from all the characters we meet in our lives, and ultimately the way to begin on our road to Calvary, our road to the great END in our existence. His final chapter had this to say,

"The young man, going out of his town to meet the adventure of life, began to think but he did not think of anything very big or dramatic. Things like his mother's death, his departure from Winesburg, the uncertainty of his future life in the city, the serious and larger aspects of his life did not come into his mind.

He thought of little things--Turk Smollet wheeling boards through the main street of his town in the morning, a tall woman, beautifully gowned, who had once stayed overnight at his father's hotel, Butch Wheeler the lamp lighter, hurrying through the streets on a summer evening and holding a torch in his hand, Helen White standing by a window in the Winesburg post office and putting a stamp on an envelope.

The young man's mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams. One looking at him would not have thought him particularly sharp. With the recollection of little things occupying his mind he closed his eyes and leaned back in the car seat. He stayed that way for a long time and when he aroused himself and against looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background upun which to paint the dreams of his manhood" (Anderson 252).


And that's the end. It's strange sometimes, the kinds of things that occupy our minds when we travel. It is everything from the most profound revelations to the most meaningless frivolity, and yet it occupies us. Perhaps it is the act of moving out of a homely place, a familiar world, into the great beyond, the unknown, the New World. It unsettles us, and thoughts and phatasm's begin to drift out of the deep recesses of our souls. Some fine writing comes out of it all though. I suppose at the last, it comes from the fact that we all are always searching for something in our lives. Our minds are carried away by our "growing passion for dreams"
And some live their entire lives around that proposition. The Great Gatsby is perhaps the premier book about what people will do for the sake of a dream, and indeed what entire nations will do for their sake.

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....And one fine morning----
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Gatsby, the entire concept of the American dream, is but an extension of the passion for the great "something" we all want in our lives. The right to pursue happiness might as well have read, "The Right to Pursue Dreams" It's all we ever do really.
And some grab onto something lesser as they are searching for it. Some of them grab onto themselves, and become obsessed as to why they are unable to find whatever it is they are searching for. They become like the figure eighted snake, devouring itself, spending its fire upon its own destruction. And some find it. Those are the people who are happy in life, those that succesfully, and healthfully pursue their dreams. They have a little OverSoul (Emerson) and let it touch their lives, the purity and subtlty of Nature playing its roll in their lives, and yet do not become grotesque in their single minded pursuit of that goal. They do not give up the social blessings of human society to live in a tree somewhere eating bean curds. Because those that do are ultimately no more or less happy than those that do not.
We all search for something. The important thing is to keep our passion for dreams healthy, and identify what our dreams are, and to find them.

How? Try things, think about things, talk to those that have gone before us. Joseph Campbell once said that "We have nothing to fear, for all the heroes of all time have gone before us". This perhaps is the crux of the puzzle. As George in Winesburg did, we all come across characters. Other people that have gone before us, and in one way or another have had some measure of the challenges of finding their dreams, and failed or succeeded, whichever matches the full measure of their mettle. Learn from these people. Sit across from them in the small hole-in-the-wall joints that you meet them in, or on the train, on the street, on the bus. Wherever you find them. And soak. Be a vortex of experience. Many of them will talk, whether you prompt them or not, becuase some of them can't contain it any longer. You are nothing, you are not there. Only their pain, or their rapture. You are just a fisherman sitting on the edge of the whirling maelstrom of their lives, and you can cast you line in and find a prize. Take that prize. Go and digest it, and keep what is of value, and lose what is not. That is for your decision. This is how to define dreams.

Pursuing them is action, and research. Deciding from your fishing, WHAT to do, and how to pursue that goal.

And beyond that is your own sharing. If you have been successful, you can purposefully make the decision to share what you have learned, and help others. If you have failed....

You are but a maelstrom, and perhaps some other fisherman can benefit from your wreckage.