Ever have the dream where you're swimming or playing basketball or football, and no one can stop you? Like most of our dreams, this one is trying to tell us something important.
There is a winner within all of us. Experience and complacency has taught us to drown out its music with the noise of distraction and negativity. There is a song of hope that sings out of our heart, but we can only hear it in stillness and the practice of faith and vision.
A lean, alert, pulsing warrior wants to emerge out of our sloth and discouragement. An achiever, a true believer, an adventurer, an truly alive person who embraces life and possibility. We are meant to touch other people and do hard, good things. Often we settle for far less and remain defeated and small.
We quiet our dreams and lose their clarity. Living without the focus and vitality of our dreamer selves, life becomes a forced march through the sludge and muck of routine, obligation, and habit. A deadly spiritual atherosclerosis sets in, living on fried fats and deadened imagination, brought on chiefly by the failure to read, think, dream, play and love.
Look around! Notice for a moment the beautiful unifying order God gave the world. Watch a happy baby play on the floor with a few toys. Watch them discover the joy of twisting a knob or ringing a bell, turning a lever or kissing their toes. Watch how delighted and playful we are as infants, and realize we were meant to be that way.
Experience teaches us danger and regret, and slowly we teach ourselves that is all there is. We drown out the music of our souls, and deaden ourselves to beauty and hope. Over time we misplace the ability to run or laugh or even cry meaningfully. As babies we cry so creatively. We convey deep sadness, outrage, discomfort, or the desire to be held. Indignation pours out of our souls and creates an urgency for change. As adults we never expect change. We forget to believe it can happen. We forget how much power we have to create it. Babies cry and discover and dream with great joy. Most adults hardly do any of these at all.
A lot has been written about the great physicist Albert Einstein and what made his marvelous brain different from other men. Certainly he was born with a great capacity to think and learn, but one of the keys to fostering it was the child-like curiosity and simplicity he encouraged in himself. When he was five his father bought him a compass, and that inspired his fascination with science, the inner creativity of thought that spurred him all his life.
Of course there was only one Einstein. But we are all meant to remain creative, curious, hopeful beings. It's our nature to contemplate and wonder and dream. We have to stop letting the noise of the soulless brutal adult world drown it out.
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