Sing to Me, Dreamer...

Sometime close to the beginning of they year, I declared to my parents that regardless of where life would find me in December, I’d visit a dear friend in Kuwait. She is quite the soul sister and now that she's moved back, nothing seemed better than seeing her in her part of the world. I also started reading up on  an ancient mystic poet by the name of  Rumi,  and it suddenly became imperative that I visit this Sufi’s tomb. So Turkey was also added to the itinerary. It was the best thing I’d planned for myself in a long while. Encouraged by my parent's input I started planning the trip, thinking up vague details in my head. Suddenly my  summer plans started following me around like a rainbow that only I could see. Life was good.

 Dreaming or the ability to do so = the best thing!

 For some reason or the other, things have come to be that this plan is no longer feasible. I only had a month of thinking about it before I woke up to the stark reality of logistics and the like. It was fun dreaming of doing this but I also knew that I wanted to take this trip when I was financially able and capable of doing so on my own. It would mean much more then. Perhaps I’d always known that  this ambition wouldn’t be all that feasible until I started working, but the vestiges of the child in me dismissed anything that smacked of practicality and finance. But the rational side of me inevitably took over. I didn’t really notice when I stopped, but one day I stopped thinking about this trip altogether. It happens.

But a couple of days ago, I was watching a movie set in Turkey, and it hit me – I’d not only stopped thinking about this trip, I’d stopped dreaming about it. I had stopped imagining the possibility of it. Is this what grown ups call growing up? When we start viewing and limiting dreams through the frames of practicality. Weighing everything up, deciding if something is feasible before allowing ourselves to  imagine it? A form of self-preservation perhaps. The fall won’t hurt so much if we stop climbing mid-way. But when did I start worrying about falling? When did just imagining something suddenly become so scary? I suddenly started hankering for the days of yore, of happy childhood days. When dreams were untainted by ‘reality’. When they were as big, beautiful and unpractical as the stars twinkling in the night sky.

Thinking about this has been good for me. I’ve made peace with the part of myself that requires rationality for everyday decisions. But I’m reclaiming my ability to dream unhindered and free from limitations. Surely, they exist in two different realms for a reason. Imagine if the innovators, the writers, the dreamers if you will, allowed their reality to limit their dreams. Would they be able to imagine as well as they did in the framework of 'what was' as opposed to 'what could be'? Reality has its part, but it can do so much for me. It can’t help me imagine the warm Konya sun on my back. Or the experience of smoking a sheesha in a legit Turkish market, over loud bargains and a hot mint tea. Yea, even if it is the globe trotter in me, I’ve started dreaming again. Keeps things interesting.