|
A Person Ought
To Have A Dream
Richard
Bishop
©
Copyright 2011 by Richard Bishop
|
|
There once
was a poor middle-aged Farmer who just knew that if he had a big barn
things would be better for his family. So, he scrimped and saved over
the years and did have a barn built - so big and so nice that he was
proud of its appearance in the neighborhood and also proud that he
had made his dream come true. But then, six months later, a big storm
with lightning caused it to catch fire and burn to the ground.
Sometime
after this disaster (which, by the way, was not covered by
insurance), he attempted to explain to his Family what he had learned
from these vagaries of life -- trying to express his feelings about
the capriciousness of nature and its outcomes in life that we call
“fate” or which Insurance Companies sometimes label as
“an act of God.”
He said,
“A Person ought to have a dream. That’s a fine thing for
it gives you something good to think about even when times are hard
and gives you the grit to go on. Night or day it comes to you and
leaves a good taste in your mouth because you feel like you’re
in control of your daily life since your dream is the solution to
many of the things that are wrong. You can keep it to yourself and
take it out and dust it off whenever you like and nobody can take it
away from you. You can chew on it for hours constructing its final
form with the most elaborate details and the smartest appearance no
matter whether it’s a plan of action to change the world or
something you can touch like an ordinary barn.”
“But,
really, in the end, a Person shouldn’t get his dream. For when
that happens and it comes true, the dream that you invested so many
hours in contemplating is wiped out and lost as if it never was there
in the first place. And all the good things it did for you are gone;
such as giving you the courage to go on and on in the face of tough
times. Also, the peaceful, smiling, self-satisfied “in-charge”
attitude about your daily life now has left you, because the things
about your daily life that your dream was going to fix are no longer
so clearly in focus because the spotlight is off. No,
no, it’s better to have the dream. Not even Nature can take
that away from you, like our barn was.”
As we
noted, the Farmer didn’t have insurance - but even if he did,
his advice would not have changed, since
it’s about dreams and not about having the resources to
continue on.
But,
I believe that the “jury is still out” on his advice born
of bitter experience.
*My
apologies to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and their 1945 Movie
“Our Vines Have Tender Grapes,” starring
Edward G. Robinson (script by Dalton Trumbo, adapted from Frederick
Hazlett Brennan). I have re-created this scene and its dialogue (in
an approximate way) solely from memory.
The
following (Example # 1) makes it sound, at first, like
realistic advice:
I
acquired a laptop computer and used it for three
years with only 256 MB of “work area”
memory called Random Access Memory (RAM). Often, while working, I
would get a message “you are out of work area memory.”
And, so the dream was
born of up-grading the memory with another, larger chip. The thing
that stalled me, was opening up the Computer and possibly voiding the
warranty when installing the new chip. I stewed and chewed on this
idea for another year
until I read a magazine article on how easy it was to change a memory
chip. After four years
of use, I finally went to an Electronics supplier and bought a RAM
memory chip of the capacity 1,024 MB or 4 times the capacity of the
old one. I was able to install it in about 20 minutes. Never again
have I been bothered with the message: “you are out of work
area memory.”
But
now-a-days, the “sale” advertisements for laptop
computers brag about having 4,096 MB of work area RAM. This is 4
times the capacity that I dreamed of and “went for” or 16
times the memory I started with! These
technical “upgrades,” whether or not actually needed, are
cleverly marketed to make us feel dissatisfied.
Now, you
really have to ask yourself: “Did attainment of the Dream
really help me?” Would it have really made much difference if I
had done nothing to make it come true. Compare it to your car. Would
an extra 10 horsepower have some utility and could you really notice
it in your everyday driving? For me, it’s now a moot issue and
I really don’t have
to think about this “problem” anymore because my computer
is “maxed-out“ at 1,024 MB of work area RAM. There
is no place available for more or larger chips. But
does it end there?
No, no, it
doesn’t end there!
Our “Marketers” have learned to make us dissatisfied with
the status quo and can cleverly cause a reoccurrence of the dream any
time they want to; making it seem like an entirely new dream. And all
you can say is: “Oh, oh, the dream is back -- just maybe I do
need a whole new Computer,”
and once again I do the “chewing it over” in my mind;
that means that the dream is still there after lying dormant for a
while but it really never left, fulfilling the statement: “No,
no, it’s better to have the dream.”
But
sometimes getting the dream (Example # 2) is highly satisfactory and
gives you a good “hey, look what I accomplished” feeling
of fulfillment:
Our house
has three floors but only one doorbell. Most doorbells are limited by
the manufacturer to a sound level of not more than 85 decibels which
is probably an industry standard (apparently to protect our ears from
damage). Our doorbell is located out in the stairwell on the second
of the three floors. The sound level of 85 decibels, while
reverberating inside the three-story stairwell like inside a giant
guitar box, was still not enough to overcome traffic noises outside
in the street or television noises inside the house and we constantly
missed package deliveries by United Parcel and DHL trucks. They
routinely left a postcard requiring you to go to their nearest Office
to claim the package within 7 days. If you did not claim within the 7
days, the package was automatically sent back to the sender by their
holding Office. But who needs this kind of inconvenience?
What to
do? I dreamed of all
sorts of ways to fix the situation. The most elaborate would have
been to hard-wire all floors and install three doorbells; one each
within the living areas on each floor. Very costly, and lots of
plaster dust and new wallpaper, and a new 230 Volt step-down
transformer to 10 Volts with larger capacity for the additional two
doorbells.
I once had
seen a device on a plastic shrink-wrap card in a building supply
house that advertised an early version of a radio-type sending device
for your doorbell; where you could carry the one portable “brick”
type receiver as far away as out into the back yard. If someone rang
your doorbell, and the receiver was at your side, you couldn’t
miss it. But what if you were on one of the floors and the receiver
had been left on another?
I dreamed
of various solutions for over three years
until I found a manufacturer that offered a tiny radio-type
transmitter to attach to the present doorbell (which is triggered by
the 10 Volt impulse when someone rings the bell) and 3 small portable
receivers, each about the size of a “Handy” (or many
more, if you would need them) for the different floors. All sound off
with the “Cathedral Chimes” (or 7 other “tunes”),
have a red light that flashes, can also be clipped to your belt or
pocket, are battery operated and the 2 AA type batteries last about
eighteen months with normal usage. In the end, my “stewing in
my own juice” and procrastination, luckily, were rewarded with
technical evolution that provided ever more innovative features. And
what an elegant solution; no wiring, no dust, no mess, and no
wallpaper!
We have
never since missed a package delivery and are very happy with this
dream-come -true. And there are no marketing
“upgrades” to make us dissatisfied. In
this one case the dream went “poof” and evaporated when
the solution was found. I do not
miss the dream or “chewing the possible solutions” over
in my mind. And we have never looked back because the things in our
Universe are in order now; the way they ought to be.
So which
is better -- (1) having the dream; getting it and losing it again,
over and over or (2) having the dream once and then “getting
it” in some permanent way while watching it “disappear
forever” through satisfactory fulfillment in reality?
Even if we
can afford it (possibly through insurance), do we have to keep
re-building the Barn? I think the key words are: “And we have
never looked back because things are in order now; the way they ought
to be.” Therefore, the advice: “No,
no, it’s better to have the dream”
becomes a moot issue, as is,
because it just doesn’t go far enough.
So which
way are you better off? I’d say you are better off not
returning to the same old dream. This gives you a chance to dream
anew -- on different things -- not being wedded to the old dreams
which can be labeled, if continued without reason, a “fixation”
(otherwise known as: “arrested development” of your
Creativity).
What is
this? You mean a person can’t or shouldn’t have a casual
dream, frivolous or otherwise just for the fun of it? Well, of course
you can. Sometimes these are the beginnings of the most creative and
innovative things that one can experience. Picture the young Girl who
always wanted to become a Registered Nurse and wound up becoming an
Attorney, instead. Or the young Boy who dreamed for years of becoming
a Policeman and became an Engineer, instead. Or in my own case, I
dreamed of becoming an airplane Pilot (but the eyes would not have
it) and instead, became a Comptroller (a kind of Financial Manager).
And if you
believe that the definition of a Manager is one “who makes the
difficult choices when there are not enough resources to go around,”
then you’ll see that dreams also can be managed and, when
seriously considered, the fruitful ones can be continued and the
improbable ones can be re-worked and maybe salvaged (or discarded).
A Person
ought to have a dream
… but the dream ought to
give birth to positive improvements in your life that make it ever
more fulfilling. If it doesn’t do that, then the dream itself
ought to be
re-invented!
In the
case of the Farmer, maybe a new barn was never really the answer to
fulfilling his family’s needs. If the dream is periodically
re-considered and revised (or even eventually eliminated), then the
barn will not have died in vain!
Contact
Richard
(Unless
you type
the author's
name
in
the subject
line
of
the message
we
won't know where to send it.)
Richard
Bishop's Biography and Story List
Book
Case
Home
Page
The
Preservation Foundation, Inc., A Nonprofit Book Publisher