by L. G. William Chapman, B.A., LL.B.
Everyone has, I suspect, a dream, an ideal vision. Mine is one I’ve had for many years. I cannot recall when it first fomented but I’ll guess it was about thirty years ago. These things require the effluxion of time for their fruition. Early in life we’re caught up fulfilling the assignments and admonitions of society and consequently override the reverberations from below. But eventually they surface and take on increased denotation. It is likely no more strategic than the natural synthesis of thought which finally beckons us to ponder our ultimate desires and furthest achievements without of course engaging in capricious fantasy. Fulfilling a dream is, after all, a seminal ambition.
A dream, if it is to have any draw, exacts an element of feasability. It must admit the capacity for implementation. There is, however, normally an unsettling feature of incongruity to a prize-winning dream; that is, the dream captures the superficial incompatibility of what one has and what one wants – you know, the committed urban businessman who pines to spend the rest of his life fishing in a remote glen. The incongruity of one’s daily reality and the persuasive world of dreams mustn’t, however, be so attenuated as to diminish the likelihood of ever attaining it. In a word, a proper dream demands that while you may have to stretch to get hold of it, it mustn’t be entirely out of reach.
Any corking dream must be more than nominally tangible. It cannot for example merely be a regular lull in the middle of the afternoon when one’s spirit wanders off aimlessly in search of retirement from the effort of living. In this respect the reality of one’s dream needs to be grounded upon normal considerations of time, space and economy. Time, being appropriate for one’s age; space, relative to one’s customary country of residence; and economy, in touch with the obvious financial limitations.
It is easy to harbour a dream without ever doing anything about it. There are readily at hand endless rational motives to remain intransigent about one’s life. If however the fulfillment of the dream doesn’t involve pointless closure of otherwise important dimensions of one’s life, then the pursuit of the dream is bound to be successful and entirely worthy of the endeavour.
As with any workable proposition, a dream calls for the first step to be taken in the journey to its consummation. The dream must be credible to oneself. This is the transmutation of the dream from aspiration to incubation. I find it is one of the pleasant accidents of aging that superfluity diminishes daily. Pared, life is far more manageable. By removing the inessential baggage in one’s affairs, the dedication to your dream is more abbreviated and feasible. A less than fanciful dream includes little detail and more broad strokes. In the end capitulation to your dream is an acknowledgement of what can be the genius of living instead of simply awaiting the final stroke of our dissolution to relieve us from the calamities of life.
Oh, and if you care to know, my dream is a saltbox on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Nova Scotia.
