Author’s note: A couple weeks ago I wrote a column entitled “Choose Your Sacrifice”. This week we will continue that theme into a series.
The world is often divided into two types of people: the dreamers and the realists. Two extremes: one high up in the clouds, the other firmly planted on planet earth. But maybe we should add a third category, a no-man’s land, somewhere in between.
Dreamers are illogical, detached from reality. They are idealistic young people, chest-pounding CEOs, and artists. John Lennon, strumming a guitar, singing about world peace—a dreamer.
Realists are often older, more cynical folk. The hard-knocks factory workers, the ones who grew up and realized life never was what it cracked up to be. Sometimes realists are wise like Yoda, and sometimes they are just plain crotchety and depressing, like Eeyore.
It is really hard to find middle ground, the perfect blend.
The Biblical Jacob was a dreamer who met Rachel and was convinced she was perfect. Morning after his wedding day, he wakes up to find he’s married to Rachel’s ugly sister, Leah, and he starts the downward spiral of disenchantment.
More often than not in life, Rachel always turns out to be Leah.
Ironically, Jacob had a son named Joseph, who dreamed ten times bigger than his father. Joseph dreamed of people bowing down and worshipping him!
But then Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers. Rachel turned out to be Leah. But he didn’t give up. He became the best slave Egypt had ever seen, promoted again and again.
But then Joseph was sabotaged, framed, and betrayed by his master’s wife.
By all rights, Joseph had every reason to give up on his dreams. To admit it would always be Leah.
But he didn’t.
He slogged away in prison, making the best of it, choosing to help the inmates around him, refusing to be defeated. Joseph possessed an indomitable dream, and that dream propelled him through experiences that would have broke any self-respecting “realist.”
Joseph goes on to become second-in-command of Egypt during the height of its power in the Middle Kingdom, and saves the whole nation from starvation.
Joseph is a success story, the poster child for dreamers. But he also breaks the mold. He went through hard times, but he held onto his dreams. Joseph was wide awake, dreaming.
The third way is a wide-awake dream. A daydream.
A daydream is a place your mind wanders because it likes to be there. It’s potentially the perfect blend, because it’s fully dream, yet fully awake.
A daydream is the only place the realist in you can go to live in the power of the possibilities, and the only place the dreamer in you can go, without feeling duped into believing a pipe dream.
When your mind wanders, watch it. If it flitters into the clouds, let it. If it descends into the worries and woes of the sea, endure it.
In the end, what matters isn’t where it takes you, but what you choose to hold onto, because that is what changes you, whether or not it changes the world around you.
What it means to be human isn’t that you give up on your childish dreams, but that you stalk your daydreams, and choose them.