And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.

— Joel 2:28

Dreamer.

The word has a bad rep.  It connotes laziness. Distraction. Fuzziness.  Idealism.

To dream suggests that we are not fully present, that we are somehow disconnected from reality.

“Get real,” we tell dreamers.

And some dreams can be pretty damn weird.

But many are visions, hopes, and aspirations that reside in the recesses of our minds. They may represent things we want to do, to achieve, to have, to be. They can form a mosaic of our lives made whole.

Our dreams are our own silent visitors from an unconscious world that inspire us to create; that urge us up in the morning; that drive us forward.  They are the engines of our heart.

Climbing Denali was a dream for me.  Ever since I was a boy, I wanted to climb The High One: the one that rose up out of the plains with the highest uplift in the world, the one with the coldest temperatures and the the most ferocious winds; the epic storied one that has always challenged mountaineers from around the globe. Inspired by a book my father gave me, I dreamed of being an explorer;  of walking on Denali’s glaciers, climbing through Denali Pass, traversing beneath the Archdeacon’s Tower,  and standing on its summit.

And I did.

It was a somewhat curious dream.  Not terribly practical.  Or “useful.” Some would say downright inconvenient (Ann), especially as I contemplated the third attempt in eighteen years.

But dreams aren’t always logical.  Many don’t make sense to other people.

But they don’t have to.  Our dreams belong to us.

Dreams are sometimes vivid, sometimes not, sometimes odd, always elusive.

But many whisper to us.  Of  joy, of hope, of possibility. Of life fulfilled.

I love the symbol of the dreamcatcher.  Woven in webs with sinew, The Chippewas believed that by sleeping beneath these hoops, they could sift out the “bad” dreams and capture the good.  

Too few of us capture and pursue our dreams. And time is not our friend. “Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time, ” wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery.  “Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.”

Time will rob us if we let it. The clock will run out.

Tony Robbins says:  “We’re so caught up in all we have to do – be sure to take the time to stop, be silent.  Listen to the whispers of Destiny… guidance is waiting.”

The Carmelite mystic William McNamara admonishes us: take long, loving leisurely looks at the real.

We must take the time to touch our dreams, to cradle them, to nurture them, to bring them to life. (No one else will.)

Reclaim Your Dreams is the title of Jonathan Mead’s excellent e-book.

I hear so many of my contemporaries talk of being “too busy,” “too out of shape,” “too old” to do what they otherwise might do. That the time for fulfilling the dreams they once had has passed.

That’s bullshit.

“The best is yet to come,” Sinatra crooned.

“Your car goes where your eye goes,” writes Garth Stein in his beautifully crafted bestseller The Art of Racing in the Rain.

Your heart goes if you will but follow.

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined,” wrote Thoreau.

Denali was my dream.  (There are more, of course!)

What are yours?

Photo of Dream Catcher courtesy of Todd Louis of DreamCatcher.com.  © Todd Lewis/DreamCatcher