“I am struggling everyday, nay, I am struggling every hour so that I make true this dream I have been dreaming of. This is achieving one milestone. Will this do, I question. No, no, never! I want to achieve many a milestone. Are my endeavours then commensurate with my ambition? At one moment I feel like mocking at my fantasy, but at another, my dreamer comes to my rescue. Like a colossus he rises before me and I feel fully possessed. I suddenly bask in the clear sunshine around the little pond near my house, hear the birds chirp with emotional appeal, and feel delighted over the usual pranks of the neighbourhood children. I feel so light and elated.
“Who says that dreams are mere dreams and they have hardly anything to do with hard realities? Yes, this can come only from the mouth of the hard-core pessimist. I say the panacea lies with the dreamers. Dream, and dream with positive optimism. It requires stupendous amount of mental strength and courage to be a dreamer. A dreamer is he who has absolute faith in spiritual potentiality. He does not dismay, his is the Himalayan hope, stable and unflinching. My dreams are all self-created. Dreams that visit me during nights, I forget them all. I am a manufacturer of dreams. Even if you wish to call me a fanatic I will never give up my habit of dreaming. For God's sake, do not brand my dream as wishful thinking. Even if you do so, please remember, without a great wish or a great dream, you can hardly make human life worth living.”
I wrote this almost seven years back. Today, when I look at it, I see a little girl, in pigtails, scribbling something in her diary. I dreamt of a perfect world then. Or did I dream of having the power to make the world perfect? I perceived all things around me with an eye that looked for the good. And if I didn’t find any, I would think of ways to make it good. How I believed in goodness! How I believed in optimism! How I believed I could change the world! In retrospect, do I find the girl in pigtails foolish? I think not the way she does. I see not the way she does. I live not the way she does. And I regret it. I want her dreamer to take over and help me dream again. I fail to see my own dreamer.
Have I buried him beneath layers of gloom that I vainly term maturity? When did I let my humble self deride the colossal dreamer in me?
I can see the spark in the little girl’s eyes. She will not take even a moment to tell the right from the wrong. She will not hesitate to give up her security of comfort for her dreams. Why do I hesitate then? As I think of that little girl today, I beckon my dreamer to help me dream again.
