The Art of Believing in Your Dreams
Writing itself is the gift, I thought. As the soft music played in the background, whisking me off to lands unseen in the mind's eye (or was it actually the heart's?). No matter, it magically carried me to the place where dreams are made. The place where dreams are made…
In a far-off land, close enough to hear your heartbeat and far enough away that it feels like international travel, there's a vast field where dreams from your heart land in ripe soil, protected with nets made of fairy dust akin to fireflies, shielding them from the disease of doubt, woe, and worry. The price for entry here is sincere longing from your heart. What looks right but feels wrong — well, those dreams don't land here the way their true counterparts do, like meteorites in the sand, forging lightning in the earth of this place.
When did we forgo dreams?
When did we begin to believe that dreams were the things of children, as if children themselves somehow weren't closer to God in their innocence, in their time spent on earth, and the half-life equivalent of womb to earth? As if a baby's eyes didn't gleam with something otherworldly, and as if we were to pretend that spreadsheets mattered more than women's health or racial inequity… when did it become en vogue to silence the soul, the songs (and cries) of the earth — for what?
Illustration by Ands Mahardika on Unsplash
What is miraculous is the nature of dreaming itself. In 2020, I did a complimentary series during the pandemic to teach others the various meanings of dreams and how to decipher them in your own life. Perhaps the greatest adventure of all is dreaming a new world into being — the art and magic of navigating a world that represses the living magic, in lieu of perceived safety and power, often at the grave expense of another (or others, not yet recognized as equal in value).
This practice goes by many names, but most of all, it goes by love.
In the land of dreams, our earnest, heartfelt wishes catapult through time and space to land in a place where they may grow. And from that place, our deepest wishes take root. We deny the existence of that reality in our skepticism, in fear, we call truth. We see it as wiser and cooler to be skeptical and vague, versus clear, direct, and powerful in what might be, in what's possible, in the ability to dare to dream. To imagine what's possible beyond this inherently challenges paradigms, likened to godliness, but forged from a relative hell on earth.
Dreams are the antidote to depression and oppression.
Dreams take flight in broad daylight from the essence of our hearts, if only — as Peter Pan declared — you'd believe.
And so I return to where I began — the soft music, the quiet room, the pen in my hand. This, too, is dreaming. This, too, is the dare.
So, believe, Peter.
Believe.