Riding the Slipstream

Mood: reflective, so be warned! I am a dreamer. Always have been… for as long as I can remember. My mother used to say that I cannibalised my brain to feed my soul. Thank God, she did not say tortured soul, because that would have meant years of therapy. Looking back, I am amazed how my dreams have changed and how they seemed to reflect the stages of my life and the person I was at the time. I guess it is part of the natural progression of life and that dreams, in fact, mirror that journey. Years ago, in my mind, I saved the planet every day. I was the hero. I had super-human strength and powers; dashing good looks and knew the cleverest dialogue. Women adored me and men feared me... well as much as one could fear or adore a pint-sized kid with gap-teeth. Comic book heroes like Batman, Superman, and Spiderman faded in comparison. There was no evil villain I could not destroy, and no diabolical plot I could foil. When I reached my teens, my fantasies almost always involved travelling to far-off places, experiencing amazing real-life adventures and doing daring feats. Sex played a big role too… a girl I saw on the street, a face I saw in a magazine or on television, a voice I heard on the radio. I decided what was good, what was bad and how far I would go. If I did not like how a fantasy played out, I’d simply backtrack and set off in a new direction. Magical! I lived the high life. In my dreams I could have whatever I wanted and whoever I wanted. I was still king of the world, just a little more human than before! As I grew older and moved into my twenties, my fantasies were all about achieving. Making money… making it big, building an empire. I wanted the best life had to offer and become the ultimate fantasy achiever. It was about making my mark on this world and leaving behind a legacy… something people would admire and remember for years to come. Surprisingly enough, happiness was an entity that never really featured in my fantasies. It was a given. As long I got what I wanted, I was happy and so was everybody else. In my fantasies I was the single most important person in the universe. Hehe… I think they call it suffering from a god-like complex? In my non-fantasy life I did all that was expected of me. My head may have been in the clouds, but I was mature enough to keep my feet firmly planted in the bosom of Mother Earth. I knew that if I wanted my dreams to come true, I had to lay the groundwork. So I read, studied, worked hard, set goals for myself. I learnt to achieve. I had the plans and sometimes fantasy became a reality and other times, reality remained mere fantasy. In some profound moment (of which there were very few), I even learnt that despite not fulfilling my dreams, the learning process and the experience I had gained, was as important as the achievement itself. It sounds pretty silly, right? Even in those old fantasies I was mostly disconnected from reality and the people around me. Other people rarely featured, and when they did, they had no faces. They had no dimension. They were however bound together by a common thread… they were in complete awe of me. I was a three-dimensional hero in a one-dimensional cardboard world. All super heroes are loners… that is rule #1 in The Great Handbook of Superheroes (volume1). One rarely experiences failure in the fantasy world. Yet, even though I am almost always recognized and appreciated, I still remained isolated and detached, if not somewhat damaged. My fantasies were restricted to what I knew and what I was used to. These days, however, my dreams are a bit more grounded. I must be getting older?! I dream about things that can actually happen. I still hope that I could save the world, but not on a grand scale like before. I don’t want to fly nor do I want super powers. Fuck the superhero costume that shows off the bulging muscles! Spandex and a cape do not do it for me anymore... nor do knee-high boots and a freaky mask. Mostly these days, I dream that I can affect small changes in my immediate surroundings. I wish I could change someone’s life, not profoundly… just make it more bearable. So I volunteer for all sorts of causes and hopefully for the right reasons. Unlike in my dreams, there is no glamour and praise… mostly hard work and chipping away at the things that make this world we live in such a hard and unjust reality. Ha! Who am I kidding? I still hope I can do something great. The little boy inside me does not really want to let go. The adult that is me, tells me to keep it realistic… within my reach. Yet, by definition, I am still a dreamer. Are my dreams even possible? I don’t know. I’m arrogant enough to think they could be. But in order for me to do that, I have to effect changes in myself first. I know how to be honest myself. And sometimes… just sometimes, when I am really good, I am even honest with the people around me. For now I’ll keep dreaming. Who knows which one of my dreams is within my reach?