The danger of dreams is that they can kill me. Not just my body, but my soul. I can pour myself so completely into dreams that in the anguished heartbeat of final failure I cease to exist. A void. A vacuum of emptiness.
Nothing.
I’ve fallen and failed. I’ve thrown all I was into the fight to win a higher place in life and lost. In those times, I took solace in knowing I’d played my best, my loss was not from lack of effort. This gave me strength to look beyond and search for a higher goal, a bigger purpose to strive for.
Blindness was a bat to the back of the head; A surprise. that left me fear frozen on the slopes of my dreams. Unseen crevasses of doubt bewildered my mind, despair turned my breathing into gasps of high altitude anxiety. I have never felt so lost and alone.
I remembered the valley below, the cozy houses, the comforts of middle class complacency. the daily marching masses to meaningless work, forever treading water in the sea of status quo. I felt the gravity of blindness pulling me down to the coffin of conformity.
Then, in the stillness of my new blind solitude, came the murmur of memories, ghost voices of fallen angels, heroes whose lives inspired me. Mandela. Gandhi. King. And countless quiet souls who lived their truth with silent fierceness. The night wind rose. They urged me on.
What is the real danger? To die on a mountain of my own making, far from the solace of kindred souls, yet deep in the pure snow of my dreams, my last breath complete with knowing I’ve lived fully? Or do I stare up through the open window of life at summits unseen and fail to step out and climb again?
The real danger of dreams is not living them.
Yours to count on.
Tio Stib