Dreamless Dreams

Was the mistake in ever opening books itself?
You read about slaves becoming kings and lowly corporals becoming emperors of nations and your hearts are filled with grandiose dreams and wants. Your knowledge of men and letters gives you the false sense of being a superior person, a person who could emulate the great men and move mountains and crest clouds. You have been on Homer’s odyssey; you have flown with the Wright brothers; and studied at the foot of Plato.

All that indiscriminate knowledge coupled with grey hairs has given you remarkable erudition unburdened by moral conscience and naivety. Shouldn’t that be sufficient to have mastered the world? Shouldn’t that been the path to the top of heap looking with amusement at the poor plebian souls? Yet somehow you never got the opportunities and still yearn for illustrious success.

Then again maybe you got the chances but just never had the talent to recognize great opportunities. Or worse maybe you had the talent but the energy was never there. And Of course the catchall - maybe the opportunities, the talent and the energy were present but the fear of failure was just too great.

So what do you do? Accept that some people are meant to be the drones, the worker bees? The kind of people - who although still important - can just cheer the exalted ones on their way to the summit. It would have so easy to accept that only if your “readings” had not left you with unbridled ambitions and dreams. Only if the fast advancing years did not create a sinking feeling on hearing the creaking of the doors slowly closing shut.

Maybe we would have been happier just busy living life instead of thinking about it.
Yes it’s sad to be a small man with tiny dreams, but it’s colossally sadder to be a small man with huge unrequited dreams!