Dreams Don’t Die Unless You Let Them

It was an overreaction, I suppose. But first thing in the morning, a time when you might just be as optimistic as you will ever be for the entire day, I read a post on Facebook. All of it was fine, about the light of stars arriving when in fact the star died long ago. That’s the nature of the universe. But then, at the end the premise was made that like the stars I dreams die as well. I beg to differ.

Maybe dreamers die, or at least they appear to die. Their dreams live on. Dreams contain within them the means of achieving of immortality, if that’s what’s desired. You see people die. Like the universe and stars that is part of our nature. There is a brief span for each thing. Whether it is a few minutes, a few millennia or millions of years, nothing lasts except the  elemental matter from which all things are derived. Isn’t it odd that matter comes from the death of some stars? So without a star perishing somewhere in the cosmos billions of years ago all the stuff of which you and I consist would not exist. That’s science.

Me, I believe a lot of strange things but one of the enduring, beliefs is consistent with everything else regardless how strange it might seem to others. People are born to dream. Those who allow dreams to die within them make that choice. It is sad and unnecessary, but it is part of believing the illusions others set before us. We are expected at some point to cave in to the mounting pressures of practicality. We set aside our dreams promising, perhaps, to come back to them when we have the time. All too often time expires. The dream is still there, though, just unreeled. The dreamer dies but the dream never does.

Not everyone is radical in their perspective. I understand that. For thirty or more years I played the games others set before me. Participating int he practical life, enslaved to a clock, allowing others to tell me when to be somewhere and also what I needed to do in order to earn the pittance I’d agreed to work for. That is real life, right? I opted for that in lieu of chasing the dream of being a musician or a writer. And now that I’m on the backside of the adventure that has been my life, I see the error in that kind of thinking. It wasn’t an either/or choice. I should haven never set aside the dream. Look at all the time I wasted being practical when instead I could have pursued the dream.

Now, I hear you. You have obligations. You settle down, have a family and everything that goes with that. That’s what life is about – well, some of what life is about. But I propose that life is also about the adventure, learning, growing and dreaming. If that is not included in your adventure, then life becomes bankrupt as you die well before getting the chance to return to your dreams.

What prevents you from realizing your dreams is not your obligations to others or the necessity of survival. Sometimes it is as simples deciding to take a chance and just go for it.   Yes, you might fail. But you might succeed and I’ll bet the odds of success are better than the chance at winning the lottery – and it costs nothing except for making the choice and sticking to it until you reach your dream’s destination.

There is a sacred event that happens when an artist has produced a tangible artifact for posterity – in the case of a writer, something printed on pages. Holding an actual book in one’s hands, seeing one’s name on it, reading one’s own words in print that others, strangers even, will read is both sobering and humbling. It is the culmination of a process that at inception is a crazy idea that turns into a dream. And a few months or years later you can hold the evidence of the dream in your hands.

No, thats not why writers write. But it is a worthwhile experience that only writers can have the moment the writer feels like he or she is an author.

I never stopped writing, by the way. Really it was more that I doubted anyone would want to read my silly stories. Still, I continued to write them because, well… as every writer will tell you, you don’t have much of a choice. If you are a writer you will write. The reason I was in my mid 40’s before publishing my first book was a matter of deciding not to listen to everyone else. I knew how hard it is to become published. I went through the rejection. But at some point I figured out that when a publisher says ‘no’ really it means ‘not yet’. Either my timing was bad or the manuscript wasn’t ready Either way it wasn’t that the dream of publishing a book was wrong. It just wasn’t the right time.

Fried Windows is about dreams and never giving up on them. It is not my first publication and I’m determined that it won;t be my last. It is different than what came before it. What comes next will continue to be unique. It is a beginning point set int he middle of the main character’s life and there are many more stories about him and in which he participates as a supporting character.

#writing #dreams #ambitions #author #writers #publishing #FriedWindows

Buy Fried Windows here: http://tinyurl.com/o4hd2kq