Look at a plot of land. What do you see? Just a buncha stupid weeds with trash strewn amongst them so you'll wreck your mower if you try to mow them? Or do you see just the right combination of light and shade to grow a great garden? Or maybe you see a thriving community all around, making this plot an ideal location for a restaurant, shoe store, or souvenir shop. If you do, you have a dream, then, if you are willing to accompany your dream with action, you are a person of vision. Cities, farms, factories, corporations, and philanthropic societies come into being and thrive when people have vision.
Well, so much for all that be-a-success psychobabble. How about ordinary dreams, the kind you do in bed at night? Hey, there have been times I've awakened in the morning totally exhausted from dreaming I rode a century ride on my bike. And then there have been the days I've actually ridden a century ride but I'm not tired at all, but just nicely refreshed so that after a shower I'm ready to go out dancing with my wife. So which is the dream and which is the reality? How can I know? Do I care?
When I was very small (living in Grand Island, Nebraska) I used to have dreams about strolling through a passageway filled with old bones and skeletons and stuff. Then our family visited the House Of Yesterday in Hastings, Nebraska (it's now called the Hastings Museum of Natural History) where we strolled through rooms filled with old bones and skeletons and stuff. I have a vague memory of my parents saying we had all been there before, so I suppose my dreams were really memories.
When I took Driver Ed in high school, I started having dreams about driving a car backwards at very high speed towards some obstruction, or perhaps over a cliff, and suddenly discovering the car had no brakes in reverse. Fortunately, I always woke up just before the moment of disaster. Then I became the proud possessor of a newly-minted driver's license and got to drive the family horseless carriage, a 1950 DeSoto Club Coupe DeLuxe. Now, from having read lotsa technobabble about cars, I knew that this particular vehicle had double-leading-shoe brakes on all four wheels, making power brakes unnecessary even on this ponderous 4,300 pound behemoth. The brakes were incredibly powerful, though somewhat touchy, going forwards, but required monumental muscular effort to muster even the slightest braking effect in reverse. Fortunately, I was sufficiently spooked by this series of dreams that I always backed up very slowly and was always prepared to mash the brake pedal with everything I had, so I never experienced the dreamed-of disaster.
Have you ever come to know someone on-line, such as through their web site, their diary, or a chat room or opinion forum, and then dreamed of meeting them someday? Well, I've had those dreams many times. Some of my on-line friends I think would be very interesting to meet in person, others maybe I don't really want to meet. I actually have now personally met two of the people I first met on-line and both meetings were very enjoyable. Both of them are fellow bike riders living here in Maryland and regularly participating in some of the same bicycling events that I do. It's been lotsa fun.
But just what are dreams, anyway? Some say they are nothing but neuronic garbage being dumped from your brain cells as you sleep. Others say they are the Mystic Voices of the Great Spirits of Ultimate Reality. I'll withhold judgment on that for now, on the basis of insufficient evidence either way.
"Dream a little," you say? Why not dream a lot? It's fun!
