I love this quote. It’s by T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia):
“All people dream: but not equally. Those who dream at night in the dusty recesses of their mind wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they may dream with open eyes to make it possible.” 1.
T E Lawrence
Portrait by Augustus John, 1919
What is your dream? What to you represents a life well lived? Remember Quests begin with Questions. And dreams are actuated in the daylight.
One of the great mysteries of life is how to we evolve into ourselves – is it Nature or Nurture? Is it happenstance or is there a destiny that attempts to molds us into someone of consequence? No matter how long the jury of society remains in deliberation it always seems as if they come back with a mixed verdict – Yeah, the village helps, but we all come somewhat pre-wired. Could our birth have a predetermined purpose? Might we all have some preassign work to do? The act of finding ourselves, Our Dance or what “comes under the heading of your business” – to quote Hopalong Cassidy, is something you need to figure out. But I suspect you are prewired, don’t you feel it.
Hopalong Cassidy a 1950’s TV Star played by William Boyd
Henry David Thoreau stated,
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute?” And as he latter prophesies – “I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. 2.
Erma Boombeck, the delightful humorist and writer, tells a great story of her self discovery. She said she knew she was a writer in High School, but typical of her day, a husband and babies got in the way. One day she pick up the local yard newspaper, you the know the neighborhood pseudo newspaper, full of advertising adds with a bit of editorials and thought “I can write better than this!” She approached the creators of the “rag” and summited some commentaries, which were printed and noticed by a real newspaper and before she knew it she was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnists, she wrote Books, got a gig on ABC’s Good Morning America and basically became famous at the back end of raising her kids. I remember she said at one point, she paused after she was successful and observed – “This is who I always wanted to be.” That’s “meeting success in common hours.” Take a look at Erma on Wikipedia, she is amazing. 3.
Erma Bombeck an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper column that described suburban home life from the mid-1960s until the late 1990s. Bombeck also published 15 books, most of which became bestsellers.
Each of us have the responsibility of making sense out of our life, find our place in the social forest – and to hand over our part of the universe. I believe we all have an internal music, a soundtrack, if you will, to the movie we imagined in our mind. When we are little as we imagine ourselves as a Princess, a Movie Star or Hero the music swirls around us as we play. I wonder how we lose that music? Maybe it is beaten out of us?
All people who “become” look under the bricks. They are internally or kindly prompted to do so. I have looked for the presence of worthy nudging in the lives of people I have studied. History is filled with visionaries, dreamers, and heroes whose righteous sirens called them to reach or wandered beyond the edge, out to new worlds and options that are just waiting for them if they would lean out and look. These brave, but generally ordinary people, followed their inward whispers and thereby discovered a new path or truth. These catalysts and calls are everywhere. The world of art and entertainment has it’s share of those who heard and responded to an internal song or an external voice.
Carol Burnett is an American actress, comedian, singer, and writer, whose career spans six decades of television.
Carol Burnett knows about being discontent and being guided by internal voices. Her books talk about her amazing evolution into the Carol we know and it led her to say:
“I believe in God, or something. It wasn’t the God they (The God of organized religion) talked about. I didn’t seem to know or trust that God, maybe because it didn’t look to me as if they did either. It’s just that whenever I shut up long enough and listened, something would talk to me. It still does. If I just shut up and listen.” 4. I think I’ll share more about Miss Burnett later – her’s is an amazing story.
A ten year old boy sat in his classroom as the teacher began to explain the curriculum for the day – to draw with a pencil a vase of flowers the teacher had brought to class. The students got busy doing what they had been told, but the ten year old had a different idea, and when the teacher saw what he had done she was irate. He had not followed her instructions. She physically forced him down the hall and into the principal’s office and threw the boys offensive effort on the principal’s desk. The ten year old “artist” had created a pretty good vase, but the flowers were up on the lip of the vase dancing around with little “smiley faces.” To the principal the teacher said,
” Look at what he has done. He hasn’t followed my instructions!”
The principal looked at the little boy’s work and asked, ” Do you think you can make a living drawing silly pictures like these?”
The little boy, being true to his internal signals nodded his head “Yes.” That little ten year old was Walt Disney. 5.
Walt Disney the preserver of the America we all want to be
December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966
Another boy was only fourteen, riding his motor scooter down the road in the rain. Above the rain he heard a car radio and saw a group of the neighborhood men huddled in the car and listening to a boxing match. It was the Heavyweight Championship of the world. To get out of the rain he stuck his head through the window and heard the announcer say, ” And still Heavyweight Champion of the World, Rocky Marciano!” As he described it a cold chill shot through his bones and he knew, at fourteen, he knew, that one day the announcer would say, ” And still Heavyweight Champion of the World….. Cassius Clay”. He knew in spite of his size. In spite of the work, and difficulty the goal entailed, he knew that one day, he Muhammad Ali (there was a name change) would make it happen. He knew. They all knew. How? 6.
Young Cassius Clay some distance from being a Heavy Weight
How did they know? What are these signals? Richard Burton, the stage and film actor, used, what he thought, was a Welsh word to describe it – “Hwyl or hiraeth” it a kind of fervor, drive, or a compulsion to move towards, “it is a longing for something, a kind of idiotic, marvelous, ridiculous longing.”7. These promptings speaks of empty places within ourselves. There is a cold chill of undeniable recognition, a connection, a linking of realizations, a cosmic sense of the “goodness of fit.” It’s a dream, a dream we are born with and if we are wise we work with it and move it into the daylight.
The other day I learned I have some Irish blood. Perhaps that explains why this quote from another Irishmen, George Bernard Shaw, rings true to me:
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being throughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy,” 8.
Happiness is our job. We’ve got to find it under our bricks, in our ambitions and dreams.
But we have to dream in the daylight.
DREAM WINGS
Have you ever let a dream fly?
Drop off doubt and soared,
Up where anything’s possible.
You can reach for your dreams and more.
The negative gravity of earth life
Would keep us all on the ground
Mired in doubt and self pity,
Not up where contentment is found.
In the daylight we keep our gaze earthward,
Feeding and working our lot,
But at night our dreams wash in starlight
And we become what in daylight we’re not.
Oh why can’t we dream in the sunshine
Live out our life as it’s meant
Instead of weighted down with worry
With dream wings made of cement?
A.D.T.
1. T E Lawrence Introduction to The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922).
2. WALDEN, OR LIFE IN THE WOODS, 1854
3. Erma Bombeck Forever, Erma Andrews McMeel Publishing, Aug 1, 1997
4. Carol Burnett’s Autobiographies – One More Time – A Memoir Random House or This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection Crown Publishing Group. I read them both. I recorded what I learned, but thought the quote was enough. Hey I was a kid not a scholar! We will talk more about Carol.
5. A bunch of my “Tar Baby” stories in here. They have been stuck in my mind for years. Sorry, but my best guess Bob Thomas’s Walt Disney: An American Original for the Disney Story.
6. “I am 14 years old now; one rainy day I am driving my motor scooter, head down, zipping past parked cars until I pass one with its radio up loud and hear a roaring crowd. I put on the brakes, skid around and come back to hear more. A heavyweight boxing match is taking place. The car is too crowded for me to get in, but they let me put my head inside so I can hear. I have gotten there just in time to hear the announcer crying out above the noise, ‘And still the Heavyweight Champion of the World, Rocky Marciano!’ A cold chill shoots through my bones. I have never heard anything that affected me like those words: ‘Heavyweight Champion of the World.’ All the world? And from that day on I want to hear that said about me.” http://motherandsriaurobindo.in/_StaticContent/SriAurobindoAshram/-09%20E-Library/-03%20Disciples/Kireet%20Joshi/-01%20English/Mystery%20and%20Excellence/-37_Boxing%20-%20Cassius%20Clay.htm
7. I don’t know where I found this, but the web has references to Richard Burton and the words “Hwyl or hiraeth.”
8. George Bernard Shaw wrote the following sentence in a letter prefacing his book “Man and Superman: a Comedy and Philosophy”
Two fulfilled dreamers – J J Abrams and Sir Ken Robinson – Again Ted Talks 20 minutes each, both of them speak to the art and difficulty of self discovery.