To address the reasons for my long-standing abstinence from blogging would be to attempt to define the universe while riding on a broken bicycle, scrambling eggs in one hand, and sending emails with the other.
If that doesn’t make sense to you, trust me, it doesn’t to me either.
Let’s carry on as usual, then:
A friend and I had an interesting conversation earlier today about pessimism and optimism.
If there’s anything I’ve discovered recently about myself, it is that I cannot stand pessimism. I truly take it as a personal offense. I’m not sure why that is. Is it because I’m egotistical? Is it because I hate facing reality? Is it because human hope rides on a fragile train and pessimism is a brute de-railer?
In that regard, my friend tried to comfort me by telling me that pessimism and optimism are actually genetic traits, and that I really shouldn’t take it so personally when George, our microbial ecology group member, tells me that he thinks it’s a bad idea to meet up in the lobby of the library. Or that it’s a bad idea to have everyone in the group draw our organisms and submit them to the Phylomon Project. No, I maintained, I could never survive with a person who was pessimistic. Why?
“Because I’m overtly non-pessimistic.”
“Don’t you mean optimistic?”
“But I’m not optimistic. I just have a bunch of crazy ideas. I’m just -”
“You’re ambitious.”
After my friend had pronounced his diagnosis of my chronic mental state (ambitious), he then put his head in his hands and said, “Sometimes, I have so many ideas that it overwhelms me, too.”
What? “But you’re not even ambitious!” I laughed.
“I am, though. I have many ideas. I just don’t act on them like you do. I’m a lazy dreamer.”
Immediately, I thought: how many dreams did you waste?
But are dreams the same as ambitions? Do we dream as children and then have ambitions as adults? What becomes of our childhood dreams?
I think having ambitions mirrors our human desire to be constantly moving forward – most often in a well-planned, concerted – and sometimes calculated – way. Dreams, though, are different. Dreams are innocent. Dreams have no inherent direction attached to them. They are fundamental. A dream is simply the expression of possibility.
I recently watched – and thoroughly enjoyed – a Tedx Talk by Sir Ken Robinson entitled, “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything”. I thought his conclusion, based off of a passage from Yeats, was beautiful. In it, he presented the image of children and young people laying their dreams beneath our feet – and that, as such, we must tread softly.
I am a dreamer. I’ve been a dreamer since grade school. (Looking back, I am certain that it was because I was encouraged to read and write.) And the truth is, is that I never stopped dreaming. Maybe that’s why I can’t stand pessimists. I can’t stand to have my dreams trod on. I don’t like to question possibility – I like to culture it.
HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)
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P.S. Another part of the reason I’ve been holding off from blogging for so long is also because I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately. About this blog. About what I don’t want it to turn into. About what I’m afraid it is. About what I want it to be. Evolution is already on my mind, but I’ll have to bide my time until these academic chains free up a little. Until then…please let me know you are there by saying hello!
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