Abstraction

What does it mean to dream?

What is a dream? Lying within and sparking to life at a single thought--this is a dream. Latent, slumbering, essential, the vision that, though unformed, seems to bring with it the path of life--this is a dream. From youth an inner hunger that cannot die, though denied and starved through a lifetime of duty--this is a dream.

It can be ambiguous or specific. It can be many-faceted or single-faced, obsessive. It can surface differently at different times of life--a painful yearning for somewhere else now and a desperate need to travel to Ireland later--but it is always within the diamond casket of your soul, burning and burning to escape and breathe, to grow and lick away at the false structure of life with its ravenous beautiful flames.

It is fire in the blood. It is night with a single star. It is the innocent breeze on your cheek. It is all this, and it is nothing. It is inescapable and easy to ignore.

What does it mean to dream?

Without a dream you are nothing. With a dream sometimes you are nothing, too, because a dream carries with it the dull knowledge that no matter how hard you strive you can never fully live it out, you will never find the perfect representation of that vision that seeks expression within your heart.

But with a dream you are everything, because you are living on all cylinders. You are striving toward something beyond, and you are choosing every moment to seek until you find. Whether your dream is travel, or education, or business, or photography, or wine, or cathedrals, or color, once you step into the cascade you join the River of Life and become truly alive for those moments. You swim in the sea of mystery. You breathe deep the air of freedom.

What does it mean to dream?

It means you never stop facing yourself with brutal honesty. You admit laziness, pain, bitterness, incompetency, and you go on. You make yourself room to fail, and you succeed. You strike out into the unknown without the assurance of salvation. You fail at explaining yourself to others but you still keep trying.

This is what it means to dream, a little.

What does it mean to you?