Sunday, August 3, 2008

To live in your dreams...

Being an avid reader, I read loads of stuff almost everyday; infact anything and everything that I can lay my hands on. I also generally get influenced by too many things that I pass by. But sometimes merely a simple notion or thought can make you pen down an entire article. That’s exactly the reason why I all of a sudden felt the need to write yet another post in my much ‘controversial’ piece of blog.

The other day, I came across a citation by an eminent personality- ‘Reality is a great place to visit, but I would rather live in my dreams’.
Now I don’t even remember where and when I had read it. All I know is that it has left a deep imprint on my mind. Perhaps because somewhere I could totally relate to it, that I myself believe in living within the shell of my own dream world, rather than the astute reality. Its just like one can actually understand the depth of the lyrics of a romantic song only when one has been through the phase of love at some point of time in life.

To me its an euphoric feeling to lay the foundation of your dream world and then build it wisely into a kind of place you would love to spend your life in, but know that the shackles of ‘reality’ would never let you do so. You feel more like an emperor, rather like the Almighty himself, as you are not only the architect to have designed the entire place, but also its owner, and can maneuver it at your own wish, that too within a split second. What’s more… you don’t even have to put in any effort to do so!!
Infact your ‘thoughts’ is perhaps the only thing that can travel faster than light!!! So just let your thoughts drift into the oblivion…sit back in your cushion and relax….

More often than ever, that is exactly what I do… give wings to my imaginations…

… And I find myself sitting by a beach all alone, just me and my solitude… I can see the blue ocean kissing the horizon with its enormity, and some birds, like tiny dots, flying back to their nests through the clear evening sky. I can listen to the whispering of waves as they come gushing towards me and sweep away with them the soft sand from beneath my feet, instilling into the air a tinge of peace, a dash of serenity… Even the cool breeze envelops me with warmth of fulfillment.

Somewhere at a distance, I can hear a few children playing and laughing their way to glory, with not a streak of worry in their pure minds. I wonder for sometime, how long will this smile remain intact on their face, before it gets lost into a chase for a “successful” career or a so called ‘contented’ life, with all the modern gadgets and amenities to fulfill all their physical needs, but nothing at all to fuel their peace of mind.
A few happy couples lying here and there seem to be totally lost into each other, and a few others collecting shells with their arms around each other’s waist.

Its then that I feel a gentle hand on my shoulders. I turn back to see a smiling face, that very face which in reality I see everywhere my eyes take me to; without whom I feel empty from within, with whom I can talk and talk; and yet what I actually intended to say hesitantly remains preserved in my heart forever; somehow the words just refuse to escape my lips in ‘reality’… But in my dreams, I smile back to him and sit with my head on his shoulders, enjoying the beautiful, welcoming evening. I know that I’ll always have this shoulder to lay myself on, and these hands around me to protect me from the shrewdness outside, forever…

I take my eyes around, to find small cliffs and lines of palm trees… a few sand castles made by the playing children…
No honking of car horns, no cell phones ringing, no blue line buses crossing the footpath and killing roadsiders, no terrorists causing terror in civil hospitals, no two political parties fighting over a ruling position, no teen-suicides over a mere seat in an engineering college…

It gives me a kind of solace I have never felt in years and I just devour it with relish…



I know they tag those, who like me, love to live in their delusionary world, away from the reality, as ‘insane’. As the so called ‘sane’ people say- ‘You shut your eyes from reality doesn’t mean reality shuts its eyes from you too!’. But then, if reality is all about chasing money or job in the name of ‘success’, and in the meantime losing not only your values, but also the petty, perhaps more insignificant, yet joyous elements of life, then I find, to live in your dreams is far more worthwhile. After all, don’t these ‘sane’ people also say, that you get to live just one life and should live it to the fullest?

To me living to the fullest is not about to party till you drop, but to take a stroll along the sea shore with your closest one and keep no count of time…
Not to spend thousands of bucks on a holiday trip to Australia, but to sit in a garden nearby and watch the butterflies playing hide and seek with the flowers…
Not to buy costly gifts for that special one in your life to impress her, but to pluck a flower from the roadside and give it to her as a token of your feelings, and let your eyes do the speaking instead of words…

Indeed!! I wish such a world could actually exist parallel to ‘reality’. I wish I could paint the world according to my dreams. Alas! Its just like you can’t worship God and Mammon at the same time!
But then, I also fear, that if all my wishes come true, I would have no imagination to succumb to, in one of those times when I desperately beg to be free from the fetters of reality.

In the end, I hate to acknowledge, but I know I am also one of those ‘sane’ ones, running after materialistic happiness. In this run I have already gained myself a seat in an engineering college, much to my parents’ and teachers’ pride; and may be in a few years would be someone who can be defined as ‘successful’ too. But what I will never know is, in the long run, how many trivial joys of my life I have actually missed…
By the end of my life, I would know for sure how many years I had in my life… yet I am dubious if I would ever know, how much life I had in my years…