Delving into the Intangibles


   Dream  
     
 

Nothing seems beyond the capacity of human brains to conceive. So if you dream, make it a big dream, too enormous for a mediocre imagination to contain. You are the architect of your dream; there is no need to disguise the strength of its design and risk being prosecuted. A castle in the sky may crumble, but don’t worry, it’s only a dream. Dreamers are always “shameless repeaters” of the most fantastic ideas.

A dream can be like a “lure” in life, since it is the Intangible Power with the most strongly attractive force. The cost of a dream may be expensive, but it is better for you to draw up as big a budget as possible. Even if you cannot see with your own eyes the dream realized, chances are that somewhere one of your most remote descendants will achieve it.

The power of a dream is great, but just waiting for it to happen is not enough. It is you, nobody but you, who should take the steps for its realization. If I were bird! Human beings long dreamed the impossible, then one day in the year 1903 the Wright Brothers made the dream come true on a plane named “Wright Flyer,” and 24 years later Charles Lindbergh’s “The Spirit of St. Louis” made the first successful nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Looking down on the lights of Montmartre, Lindbergh said to himself,“It’s enough just to be alive this minute.” Nowadays, in excess of 600 passengers aboard jet planes many thousands of times bigger than birds are flying, day and night, over the planet in which we live. It’s a fact of history that the first humans have walked on the moon. To where the “Princess Kaguya” flew back, leaving her foster parents and suitors behind her, as beautifully described in the animated film “The Tales of the Princess Kaguya.” Beyond that fairytale, our new dreams are constantly reaching toward the vast universe.

In another Japanese fairytale, “Urashima Taro,” a young fisherman named “Taro” opens a mysterious box called “Tamatebako” given by the “Princess Otohime” of an undersea castle called “The Palace of the Dragon God.” Taro thinks the box must contain a lot of Tangible treasures, but contrary to his expectation, white smoke billows out, and he finds himself 300 years older, a white-haired old man. Does it mean all his dreams were shattered? No, I don’t think so. He must have dreamt enough of them before then. Whatever the outcome, I am inclined to think the process is also an important part of the dream.

What is the ultimate dream of human beings? Not to age or die? Put these aside, since they are impossible dreams; apart from them, however, you can be a dreamer of any sort. Any kind of dream is OK. Even a big stupid one? Why not? So what will yours be? Make it easy. Nobody can steal your dream.

If you complain that your dream has not come true, you should know there was no “use-by” date. It was only you who decided, at a certain point in time, that your dream was broken. Don’t you try again and again, no matter how often you fail to win the lottery? There is no end to a dream.

 
                                                        K.Yamakawa