Without perspective between what we have, what we want and the foresight to reach unreasonably far into the future for an intangible (a dream), we are essentially purposeless. Guitar Hero, The White Album, Cirque de Soleil, the Internet and this moment of journalistic insight are all results of a faithful devotion to a creative dream. These things give us purpose and make a life worth living.
In order to trust an idea/creative thought/dream you have got to be a little mad. Essentially all creative ideas, regardless of how practical, are based in faith. In order to commit to a dream you have to first believe in it. The dreamer must conceptualize an intangible, yet to be conceived thing. A writer sits down to start a script trusting that the script can exist, their task then becomes translating the script into tangible terms.
Perhaps this is all a little too ephemeral and reeking of patchouli to make sense of. Take for example my landlord’s son. This 19-year-old runs drugs out of my apartment building as a full time job. Up until about six months ago, he had a part time job as a sales associate for a large commercial retail establishment and he had a dream.
The stress and labor of his part time job was offering him little sense of reward or accomplishment. In order to deal with the stress he often came home and self-medicated with copious amounts of beer and weed. With a little foresight and a lot of faith, he began scaling back his hours at his job and devoting more of his time to achieving his dream. His logic was simple; he found something that brought him joy, so he decided to devote his life to it, regardless of feasibility. He had to trust in the existence of a way of life that had yet to exist for him in reality.
This is still a bit abstract, so let’s take one more example involving the same individual. In order for my landlord’s son to get out of plain view of police, competing drug dealers and unwanted clients he must be able to move quickly from the stoop in front of the apartment to behind the cast iron gate protecting it.
This is a complicated task because the automated lock system is broken and will most likely remain so until God gives up and lets Satan get hammered off of communion wine. The keyhole is also quite difficult to maneuver and requires a good two minuets of feverish manipulating and handle shaking. If one wants fast access between the inside and outside some creativity is essential. Many have devised intricate systems of folding of magazines, cigarette butts and coat hangers but none have been able to create a consistently successful method. The gate is heavy, and while logically many of these doorstoppers should work, it is nearly impossible to slow its momentum as it swings closed. The landlord’s son however had a creative dream. He discovered that crumpled up newspaper not only keeps the gate from fully closing it also works as a shock absorber killing the momentum rendering a space between the gates latch and the door frame.
Before he decided to try his method of door stopping he had to have faith that it would work. He had to have faith in an abstract concept, a dream. It is this faith in dreams that is responsible for society’s accomplishments. It is also this faith that is becoming increasingly rare.
Interestingly, only three of the ten highest paying majors appear on Princeton Review’s top ten recommended majors. The others are all open to dreaming. The point: Guitar Hero beats accounting, and dreaming beats running around in endless circles regardless of the paycheck. At least that’s what I’m banking on.
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