As I have said several times here at RJsCorner, I have always been a dreamer, even in my very early years. But for the most part my dreams have dramatically changed now. That is what this post is all about.
Read moreTag: dreams
Bright Ideas
I don’t know about you, but I just can’t seem to simply sit down in front of my computer monitor and come up with ideas for posts here at RJsCorner. In the cold weather months I post daily here, so where do all the ideas come from? That is the topic of this post.
Read morePainting with Words – Mesa Verde
I am a dreamer to my core; it is just who I am.
That is simultaneously a curse and a blessing.
I recognize how things are but imagine them to be better.
There is no place better to do that than Mesa Verde
My first visit there seemed almost spiritual.
I could almost see my ancestors living their daily lives.
How they got there no one really knows.
Why they left is pretty much the same.
The stone and adobe walls they built are still there.
I touched them and dreamed I was among them.
In their isolation they lived in peaceful harmony with nature.
But that is kinda the Native American way, isn't it?
I would go back several more times and it always felt the same.
I absorbed their world into mine if only for a few minutes.
God willing, I will go back again before I leave this earth.
My idealism and dreams needs a refill from time to time.
For me there is no place in the world quite like it.
A place where I can escape the dreadfulness of our times.
Where I can immerse myself in an imagined Utopian world.
We all need a place like that and Mesa Verde is that place for me.
Our Last Best Hope??
There just seems to be one bad thing after another happening in America today. It is hard to stay optimistic about our future. Our current Oval Office occupant is inciting hatred and ignorance among his “followers” so now they are trying to kill the people he does not like. Some seem to have gulped down the cool-aid he is serving by the gallon! It just seems to get worse and worse as each day passes. I am a very strong advocate of Thomas Jefferson’s quote “Hope is sweeter than despair” so I look for hope especially during these trying times. I know basic change, even when it appears rather suddenly, will take time to overcome especially when the wackos seem to control everything. But I have latched onto a reason for hope. To understand that read the excerpts below, and I would encourage you to read the whole source if you have the time:
Source: Does America Have a Future? – Eudaimonia and Co
Unfortunately, I have pretty much lost all personal contact with the younger generations. I am without children and grandchildren so I can’t just call, or text one for their opinions even if they cared to respond. I have to take what I hear in the social realm as evidence and that evidence continues to tell me that the Millennials will eventually invoke change much like we baby-boomers did in the 1960s and 70s.
Since I was born in 1946 I was at the head of the baby-boomers so I was in college during the 1960s when we started protesting the Vietnam war. We were tired of being told to go die for our country for what we saw as not being worth it. It was a stupid war caused by the proud egos of those in power. We had the courage to rise up and do something about it and I fully believe that the current generation is about to do the same.
Haters Are…
There just seem to be a lot more haters in the world today.
- They are bitter about one thing or another
- they envy so many others and covet what they have
- they voted to put an incompetent, ignorant, bullying narcissist in the Oval Office.
I will come out and say it, I think that many of those who voted for this guy are just lazy losers. They don’t want to take the time to understand the issues that are confronting us as a nation or even on a personal level. I think they know that he is incompetent and only thinks of himself but they simply don’t care. But, that is enough politics for now. On to other areas…
Were they always like that? Almost all of us as four-year-olds questioned everything. “Why” was probably the most often used word in our limited vocabulary. Some of us maintained the “Question Everyone” attitude throughout our lives. Since it is a major theme of this blog I like to think I am one of them. But there are others who had it beat out of them early on. They were told to keep quiet and do what you are told.
I know I quote Thomas Jefferson frequently here at RJsCorner, especially the quote about how a democracy depends on an informed electorate, but that fact seems to be forgotten by so many so I will bring it up again and again. To get back to the quote above, everyone has dreams about something but like the “Why” thing for too many of us, the dreams are squashed early on. As a result, they just don’t have the fire in their belly to begin to make them happen. If you are one of those people think about why you hate so much and do everything you can to strip it from your lives before it consumes you.
A Lot Of Noise Goin On…
I don’t know why I seem to be so fixated on sounds lately let alone poultry stuff. My daily and weekly posts here are RJsCorner are now named after sounds (cackle and squawk) that chickens make. I need to get to the underlying reason for this. 🙂 I lost my hearing thirty years ago, and since then my brain has forgotten what many sounds sound like. Sadly one of those areas is musical instruments. I used to play the guitar, not terribly well but to my own satisfaction, and I really enjoyed that pleasure. Now when I see a musical instrument being played, I struggle unsuccessfully to remember the sounds they make.
I was never around chickens that much, but they did make a big impression on me when I first visited my grandfather’s farm as a small kid. I loved the fresh eggs that grandpa had but didn’t appreciate being chased by the rooster when I went to feed them. So, why this sudden infatuation with poultry sounds?
Maybe it is all Freudian? Sigmund was pretty famous a hundred years ago during my hero Will Rogers’ time but has gone out of favor since then. Freud was a big believer that the unconscious (dreams) was where the mind put things we can’t openly deal with. Maybe I am in a second mourning period for my loss of hearing?
When it comes down to it, I guess I really don’t care that much, but it is interesting none the less. 🙂
Other People’s Dreams..
This is going to be one of those philosophical posts so hang on to your hat. I have always been a dreamer. For the most part I didn’t imagine that my lofty dreams would ever come true and for the most part, they didn’t. 🙂
When I was young my dreams were often a result of the many fictional books I read. My favorite authors during those years were John Steinbeck and Jack London. These two guys took me to places I never knew existed and to people very different from me. When I got a little older I started dreaming about what I might become when I grew up. My first infatuation was with astronomy. I read everything understandable for a young teenager about the topic. A friend of mine gave me his old copies of “Scientific American” and I devoured them. I also read autobiographies of people like Einstein, Jefferson, and Edison. They inspired me but I never dreamed that I could be like them. My self-esteem was just to low for those lofty goals.
The point I want to make with this post is that when we are young and have limited experiences we usually dream other people’s dreams. As we get older we try to make up dreams of our own. It is at that point that too many of us fail ourselves. We sometimes dream too small. Unfortunately, that tragic beginning is also often the end for too many of us.
Too few of us think of ourselves as being the person who finally discovers the root cause of cancer. Too few of us dream of solving the potentially tragic results of global warming. And maybe as a country, it is tragic that too few of us dream of becoming representative of the people. Those jobs are now to be avoided or left to those power seekers among us.
Dreaming too small, or tragically not dreaming at all is often the fault of parents who don’t challenge their kids to greatness. Sometimes just the right teacher comes along to take replace the parent’s responsibility but too often they are not there.
