A World of Dreams

The boy sat before the fireplace, dejected with life. As he watched the flames rise and the wood crackle, he tried to fathom how similar they were to what he was feeling within. Disappointment. Frustration. No sense of direction. Life to him had lost its meaning.

His father came up silently and sat on the rocking chair beside him. It was the chair he had sat on for decades. The boy did not notice at first but the screeching sound of the aged wood made him.

“What troubles you, son?” The father asked.

“Nothing, father”, said the boy and sighed.

“That sigh heralds disappointment. Has life been cruel to you?”

“Father”, the son started; attempting to choose his words with care. “Life to me is like a maze and I have lost my way walking through it. It provides me with no satisfaction; gives my being no reason for subsistence.”

The father smiled. “All things exist for a reason. See that wood? When it was alive, it held support to the leaves that provided shade to all. Even when dead, it is serving a purpose by being burnt. Do you not know what your purpose is? Do you not have any dreams?”

“Dreams are a hallucination, father”, the boy reasoned. “They fill your heart with woes because they are never fulfilled.”

The father smiled again. “Precisely the condition you are in… no?”

The boy realized that his father was right. He lowered his head. “I did have dreams father. Dreams that I thought would bring the joys of the world at my feet. Dreams that would give my soul a satisfaction for being. But they were too distant. Wild imaginations of a childish mind. And now, I feel lost.”

“You make the mistake everybody makes, my son. No dream is not worth having. No dream is distant. The only thing that separates us from our dreams is ourselves.”

“But the road was so full of thorns father. I could not possibly tread on it!”
The father sighed this time. He leaned closer to his son.

“Everything in God’s great universe comes with a mission… comes with a purpose. All things living and dead. It is your dreams that try and tell you what your purpose is. Many of us do not even listen to what our dreams have to say. There are others who try and then give up because it all seems impossible. And yet there are those who persist with their dreams and are rewarded with the purpose of life because that is what a soul seeks… always.

Man is afraid, son. Afraid of failing… afraid of gaining things the hard way and worse still, he is afraid of accepting it all. A dream… minor as it might be… has incomparable meaning for the self. Nature makes sure that those who attain them actually deserve to. At times, when you think the road to your dreams is impossible to tread, it is nature’s way of preparing you… of presenting you with options; of closing one door and opening many others. Because we are shortsighted, we do not try and read the signs. Man always remembers a failure more than he does his success. Attaining a dream has to be different than buying items from a grocery store, son. And lot more difficult. How else would one achieve contentment?”

“Our dreams are our mission? The reason we are here?”

“Yes”, said the father. “And dreams would never lie to you. They cannot. When we are young everything in the world seems possible… attainable. We believe we can grasp the rainbow and touch the stars and nothing can shake us against what we believe. Even at that age, we know what our dreams are and they are never distant but as we grow, the world makes us believe that circumstances cannot be altered. That fate cannot be changed. That dreams cannot be fulfilled.”

“Is that not true, father? Not one bit?”

“Not one bit. It is a man’s weakness that makes him succumb, not the circumstances for it were the circumstances, all would fail when the road seems unattainable. Yet there are those who emerge victorious because they were stronger. And since we are afraid to accept our weaknesses, we blame it on fate. And yet if we are ever successful, we take the entire credit!”

The boy grew silent. It was starting to make sense to him. “But how do I go about achieving my dream?”

“Understand first that it would not be easy. All things great in life have a price and are hard to achieve but once you get them… the joys are endless. ‘If you really want something, the whole universe conspires in helping you to achieve it’ is what I once read in a book. There is nothing truer.

Remember always that failure is nature’s way of showing you that you took the wrong path. It stops you in the beginning so that you do not stray forever. Failures seem cruel but they do nothing else but help you. Learn from your mistakes and failures until you stumble upon the right path. It is the hardest thing to do, son. You must never give up.

The world is not built on dreams. All day long, people wear disguises and go about the work that this world wants them to perform. Slowly, the world teaches them that their reality was non-existent. It is the small things in life that are the most beautiful, the most pleasant… things that the world makes us forget. Never forget them, son. Believe in your dreams, believe in your destiny for they, in turn, will believe in you. Listen to your heart and be patient.”

The boy felt elated. Life had presented him with a possibility and he felt thrilled. If the possibility of attaining my dream is this exciting, thought the boy, how exciting would it be when I actually achieve it?

He looked at his father. “Thank you father. I now understand. But tell me… did you fulfill your dreams?”

The father was smiling again. “I have, son. I have. And life, as a reward, presents me with more dreams. It is a wonderful process. And right now… if there was one dream I would like to see fulfilled, it would be watching you attain yours.”

The boy was proud. The fire in the fireplace seemed different now. It heralded light, hope, the will to carry on and the possibility of building a beautiful world. A world… of dreams!