Blog
Big Picture Dreaming?
Is that phrase "living my best life" still around?
What do you dream? For yourself? For others?
Well, remembering to dream is just a thought, a reminder, a way to connect this moment in reality to something else that might be. That something else might be better. Might be worse. Might be gone in an instant if something else more important comes up to distract the dreamer's secluded moment.
Who are the dreamers? What do they dream? What does it matter?
If an astronaut goes into space and comes back with nothing, what good was that trip?
If the great explorer comes back from his travels without even so much as a map, what good was his journey?
What did Odysseus learn from his 20 years away from home? Seems likely that he wasn't concerned with many of the issues that confront us in the 21st century, but what if that legendary traveler had another chance to return home after so long away? Did he learn anything after 20 years away if all he ended up doing when he got home was the same thing he had been doing for the last 20 years?
We can dream. The challenge is to dream and then pull something we can use back from that dream world into the real world. How do you make your best dream come true?
Take Notes
Last year at this time, the gardens outside of the Wonderstone Gifts workshop had only just been planted. This year, the beets, carrots, and parsnips were planted more than two weeks ago, and they're already starting to sprout.
Last year at this time, it was unseasonably warm. Today, the fruit trees might need to be covered to protect them from a damaging frost.
When taking notes, include important details about the setting. Include the date, the time, and the weather conditions. Write your thoughts. Include reflections and projections. Muse about whatever is happening in the world, and try to reach into every corner. Imagine what might come next or what might have happened if certain things had been different. What went well? What fell flat?
Record the moment. Don't worry about evaluating your observations. Just make the connection between your senses and that place where you keep your notes.
Prepare for What Comes Next
Trust yourself. If you only have one page of notes, you have something. You have a recorded experience. Do it again. Make another entry into your travel journal, your logbook, your planner, your pocket notebook.
Preparing for what comes next means recognizing the passage of time. Long shadows at the end of the day might mean shutting down the house and locking the door before heading off to work in the warehouse for another graveyard shift. Do you have something healthy to eat for when it's time to take a break? Did you bring water?
Walking through life is like walking through a dream when you can see around corners and see into the past. Remembering to dream means taking control of the motions and the thoughts that move us through each day.
What If?
What if we didn't need calendars? What if we didn't need to lock our doors? What if we didn't have epic heroes from ancient stories? What if we could move mountains? What if we really could come back from the dreamworld with great ideas for the future?
What would that mean for you? How would that affect your world?
People Dream
It's probably safe to say that we don't dream beyond the context of our lives. Events of the day, personal history, hopes, fears, joys, and achievements all affect whatever it is that causes our dreams to rise to awareness.
People read books and dream of the settings and conflicts. People play video games and dream of ways to beat the next boss. People work with steel and stone and then go to sleep with thoughts about the tasks of tomorrow. We hear chatter on the channels, and our dreams seem to be a way to sort things out, not always in ways that make sense.
There might be little signals that escape notice during the rush and shuffle of a normal day, but your dreams can amplify those whispers. What would you do if you heard a dreamland voice that told you how to address a problem at work? You know, and everyone knows, that waste is a problem. What if that voice provided you with a solution that could work for everyone?
Dreams can help a person make sense of the issues, put those issues into perspective. Not a lot matters in the great big world when the forecast shows a crop-killing frost.
You don't need to sleep to dream. You can act on your dreams right now. Figure out a way to keep your fruit trees from losing their blossoms. Other people have done it. You can, too!
People dream about what they know, but dreams can take people through unfamiliar territory and sometimes all the way into the unknown. It seems certain that many people today might be dreaming about how to farm in space. People are already making plans for mining in space. Transportation, work, politics, and energy. The issues are endless. The dreams are endless. The forces that move us seem endless, and yet sometimes, it seems like certain forces outweigh the others. It seems like underlying motivations move millions of people in one direction and millions more in another direction.
The outliers are the ones who stay vigilant while dreaming, the ones who take notes on what happened in the dream world, the ones who give extra time to try and make sense of the words read on a page from a book in the dream world.
With eight billion people and counting, it's sometimes a wonder we've made it this far. People are dreaming of a world without disease or pollution. People are dreaming of ideal workspaces and living spaces. People are dreaming of transportation, sustainability, and communication solutions that will truly take us into the unknown.
Today
Today, we know about machine learning, AI, and gene therapy. We know about conflicts on the world stage. We know about the interplay between economics and energy, trade and technology, industry and sustainability. Some of what we know about these things causes us concern. Other knowledge gives us comfort, especially when we can all enjoy advancements like ones that make the workplace safer or communication easier.
Our world today might be something like a dreamland that we take for granted. You can bet that the epic tales of old would have played out quite differently if social media and cell phones had been part of the equation. They weren't. Neither were railroads, or 3D printers, or concerns about space junk.
Maybe the hustle and bustle just wears on a person so much that they don't have time to dream. Then there's that other person who is always happy to tell you that they are "living the dream."
A few years ago, a paralyzed young man in a wheelchair told me that he was "living his best life." I believe that there is a doctor or team of physicians somewhere who really wants to make that young man's best life even better. Imagine technological implants that could restore that young man's ability to walk again.
There's a scary place between the comfort of what we know and the future that is right around the corner. Dreamers can see around the corners and into the future, sometimes. Those are the same folks who enjoy amusement park rides. Roller coasters aren't exactly everyone's cup of tea, but brain implants are only a hop, skip, and a jump from hearing aids when you think about it. It's the jump that's the real scary part, and we have to realize that not everyone will be happy at the thought of having to jump. So, don't force anyone to take a leap, but also, don't keep the dreamers from enjoying rides at the park.
Tomorrow
It will be here before you know it. Inevitably. Every sunrise brings another tomorrow. Will there still be malnutrition tomorrow? Will there still be water scarcity problems tomorrow?
You can make some decisions today that will affect tomorrow. You can ignore all thoughts of tomorrow, but that won't keep it from happening.
The Future
When you remember to dream, you start to build the future that might be. I don't know for sure what happens after that, but the days just keep coming, and I keep stepping into them with a feeling of wonder for what surrounds us and how far we've come.
My dreams are usually close to home. In my dreams, I think about things like cleaning the irrigation ditch or checking the oil in my car. I think about my family. I think about the stories I'm reading and the projects I want to complete. I think about what might be for dinner. I dream about flying way up high over the mountains, where I can see the stars and the moon above me and my sleepy little town down below. None of my dreams matter unless I do something about them.
Here, now, in reality, if you will, at least for the near future, it looks like Earth will have to suffice as humanity's only home. No surprise there. In fact, that’s great! But could it be better?
It would be ironic if we finally figured out how to efficiently set out for new worlds only to find our way blocked by all the junk we put up into orbit. I trust that somebody will figure it out.
It would be super cool to have a job collecting space debris from orbit. Imagine flying a ship way up high, like some atmospheric ocean trawler. Somebody's already thought of it, I'm sure. Maybe, in that case, it might be a good thing for the astronaut to come home with nothing to show for his trip.
