The Doer of Dreams - Part 1
I am a Dreamer.
I learned to be a Dreamer when I was an insomniac kid. Long after I was supposed to be asleep, I was still awake, sometimes sneaking out of bed to hide in the living room and watch TV with my parents.
Lying in bed awake, can be very boring. You’re not allowed to have the lights on to read. You can’t really play well if it’s dark and you’re not allowed to speak. You are all alone even if you have to share a room with people that can actually sleep.
Being bored, is not always sleep inducing. Nor is being told “go to sleep.”
And so the creation of an active imagination. It was a world where I was a hero and could do all kinds of things and I was loved and admired. Soon lying in bed awake was no longer incredibly boring and tortuous. It became the best part of the day. Not only was it where I could imagine myself in different worlds, but it became a place where I could develop my own opinions and views on this world.
Other insomniacs may spend the time worrying, but I spent the time playing.
There are a lot of dreamers in the world. Most people never make it beyond the dreaming stage. Life happens. We make choices. All of life, is a risk.
Instead of going into the college courses they want to follow the career they desire, they take the courses they need to have the sensible career.
There’s nothing wrong with that. You have to pay the rent. We need people with sensible careers.
Instead of traveling the world, they stay home and begin building a stable life for themselves or they help out members of their families, or they begin their own family.
And there’s nothing wrong with that choice either. People with jobs and homes keep the world moving forward. They feed people, and build roads, and build civilizations.
Or perhaps falling in love has cast aside the dreams of the dreamers because love is the new dream.
It happens and it can turn out wonderful or tragic or a little bit of both. The world revolves around lovers. Without them, we wouldn’t have a world.
For whatever reason, Dreamers can cease to be Dreamers, or they remain Dreamers and keep the dreams in their head. Or, they change their dreams. They no longer want to be a ballerina but instead love teaching. Or they take one part of their dream and follow that – like the guy who dreams of being a rock star but finds out he’s happy just playing gigs on the weekends at the local bar.
Life happens. Rent has to be paid, babies need to be diapered, the elderly need to be driven somewhere, teens need to be debated with, houses need to be cleaned and it can all be rich and full and stressful and happy and all the good and bad that comes along.
The dreams may turn into witches that nag and cackle at us, whispering we’re failures for not following through, or they can become clutter that takes up space and trips us up. So the dreams are thrown out with the beat up living room couch and the stacks of magazines, or left on the side of the road, too heavy to carry and no longer useful.
But the world is created by Dreamers who become Doers of Dreams. These are the people who take their dreams and turn them into something tangible.
They start off small, a sketch about a mouse perhaps, and turn that little sketch into a conglomerate of amusement parks and entertainment that provides work and careers for thousands of other Dreamers. Or they imagine a young boy with glasses who can do unusual things and morph it into a world-wide cultural explosion that develops a generation of readers and writers and connects that generation to previous generations in ways that had never been done before.
They look up at the moon and imagine flying there and then join with others who have the same vision and they make the thought real even though humans were not built to fly.
But unlike dreaming, becoming a Doer of Dreams takes work and planning. Dreams are magical. They present themselves out of nowhere and live in the unknown. They can’t be touched, although they can be felt. They can’t be seen by the outer eye, but only by the inner eye. They exist on nothing and have no substance.
Now there’s nothing wrong with staying The Dreamer. Even the Doers of Dreams have dreams that never become more than the wisps in their minds. And if you are happy just being The Dreamer, then that is perfectly fine, especially if your life is rich and full.
As for me, I want to become a Doer of Dreams.
