The Land of Dreams

Throughout our lives, we all dream, sociopaths and cling-ons alike. Dreaming is not simply a human phenomenon, but humans have long held stock in their dreams nevertheless. We are all influenced in some way by our land of dreams. Dreams are a natural phenomenon, but come with varying degrees of societal and personal acceptance. Throughout my own life, I have been led to dream by not being given a reason to have much of a logical reason to.

When I was four years old, I was diagnosed with type one diabetes, and less than a year later, I was diagnosed with celiac disease. Between this and frequent seizures, much of my childhood was in hospitals and doctor’s offices, as well as the occasional counseling center. Due to the amount of time I spent alone or with people considerably older than myself, dreams and dreaming quickly became one of very few ways to escape from an otherwise cold, clinical, and confusing world. In the world of dreams, things were black and white. Things were set into stone, and really did only have one right, or wrong, answer. The dreams got me through many confusing, or, worse still, dull hours. Within dreams, I was certain of my path in life and in death.

As I grew older and less naive, dreams became my sole source of true company. While I had acquaintances, of many ages and walks of life, most were primarily concerned with making sure I lived through the day without being too much of a disruption to their own lives. The world around me seemed ridiculous and hopeless, even at such a young age. Dreams allowed me to be a pilot, a soldier, a firefighter, things I knew, even then, that I could never be when it came time to enter the adult world. For many children, dreams are a lovely, movie-like vision of being the hero/heroine, but in my case, dreams were a seemingly necessary reprieve into a world where felt closer to “normal.”

Like many people, however, I fell into the addictive vices that masquerade as dreams. There is nothing wrong with dreaming; indeed, dreams often bring a smile to our faces (although that smile may not appear until years later). The trouble lies in the sweet nothings dreams whisper to us and in man’s desire for greatness. Similar to many, i became to attached to the land of dreams. Over time I cut myself off from the land of the living: instead immersing myself in music, in books, in grey space, and in slumber. While dreams are beautiful and entertaining in the spur of the moment, they cloud our vision and can leave us chasing after a world that never actually existed.

According to Michael Bond, author of the essay “The Secret of Success,” one of the most important things to do in order to help children reach their full potential is to encourage dreaming. Bond believes that dreams help create a sense of purpose and a “delight for deep thinking” (Bond five). Michael Bond explains by writing, “ Most important of all, he thought, was to ‘fall in love with a dream’, preferably at a young age, and then pursue it with intensity” (Bond five). Perhaps Bond is half-right, but to encourage dreaming comes with a serious future repercussion. While the toll this takes is different for each individual, all boil down to one simple revelation: the “real” world is nowhere near as loving or untainted as the world we chose to dream of as children. Children grow up vowing to fix the corrupted and embittered world they grew up in, and we as a society encourage belief in this vow; yet no generation has ever whole-heartedly attempted to do this.

Dreams also turn wicked. I do not mean this in a risque way, but merely as an assertion of how quickly the land of dreams can spiral into darkness. Nightmares, what-ifs, and fear begin to taint our once-happy land of dreams as we grow older and more aware of the “real” world surrounding us. Slowly, we realize we will never learn to fly, despite how real the wings we created in dreams seemed to be. To dream is a curse, because if one cannot think, then one cannot dream, but if one is in the land of dreams, can one truly think? Dreams turn our own minds into a sort of prison, where the brief moments of horrid clarity are merely conjugal visits.

All people dream, and many people dream alike, but nobody’s dreams are quite identical. Many people are motivated throughout their lives by their own land of dreams, either to work to bring their dreams into the real world or to try to prevent them from ever doing so. Dreams are neither good nor bad, it is the human aspect of our land of

dreams that is our downfall. As for me, I wish I had never started the cursed and fatal

practice of dreaming.