I Have A Dream

 

    What is a dream? Some people may have an idea leading to their success come to them in a dream while sleeping. John Lennon wrote a best-selling song -- one of his most iconic solo works -- based on a dream he had. The chorus of "#9 Dream" repeats a nonsensical phrase he heard in the dream, "Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé," and the lyrics refer to the feeling of a dream being real: "So long ago/ Was it in a dream, was it just a dream?/Seemed so very real, it seemed so real to me." Beatles legend has it that Paul McCartney composed the melody for "Yesterday" -- the most-covered song in music history -- in a dream one night in 1964. 

          Director Christopher Nolan took the inspiration for his 2010 psychological thriller Inception from his own lucid dreams. The psychological thriller follows a dream thief (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), a corporate spy, who steals dreams from the minds of CEOs and business tycoons. 

    Stephen King was hit by a minivan in 1999, while he was walking down a country road in Maine. While recovering from the collapsed lung and a shattered leg, the prolific horror writer began having vivid dreams. Those dreams formed the basis of the 2001 novel turned film Dreamcatcher. But it wasn't the only work of King's to be inspired by a dream. King has said, that his dreams help him to portray events symbolically in his writing.

    A field of cows inspired Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, which, according to a calm.com survey, is one of the most important ideas that ever came out of sleep. In his dream, Einstein was telling a farmer about cows being surrounded by an electric fence, but the farmer saw something different. Einstein awakened with the realization that the same event could vary from different perspectives, and the theory of relativity began to take shape.

    Elias Howe was exhausted from his attempts to develop a machine that could stitch together fabric. Asleep, he dreampt that cannabils were preparing to cook him as they danced about waving spears—and the spears had a hole at the sharp tip. Eureka! That’s when Howe got the idea to pass the thread through the point of the needle instead of the end, explains author David Jones in his book The Aha! Moment: A Scientist’s Take on Creativity. 

    “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.” This is how author Mary Shelley described the lucid dream that led to her classic novel, Frankenstein. 

    Unlike many of the other world-changing ideas mentioned here, the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde didn’t originate after a night of sweet slumber; the tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came to Robert Louis Stevenson during a drug-induced nightmare. His dream-induced screams disturbed his wife, Fanny, who angrily woke him up. Startled, he said to her, “Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.” The nightmare took a terrible turn when Fanny thought the first draft of the story was nonsense—and she burned it.  Stevenson feverishly rewrote the 30,000-word story over a three-day period. Sure enough, it ended up selling so well that the book lifted the Stevensons out of debt.

    According to psychoanalyst Carl Jung, our dreams can function on many different levels, from telling us which parts of our psyche are out of balance to anticipating our future needs. He also believed that most dreams operated on the level of stories, myths, and archetypes -- making them a wonderful source of ideas and inspiration. All human beings are also dream beings. Jack Kerouac, who composed a book entirely of his own dreams, once said. "Dreaming ties all mankind together."

    Dreaming is a natural brain function, and all human beings do it. But some people never remember their dreams, according to experts. Your dreams have meanings as well. Psychologists say that both men and women become sexually aroused while dreaming (even if the dream has no sexual content). Average amount of time spent dreaming per night: 1 1⁄2 to 2 hours. Some people dream during the day as well.

     There is another type of dreaming and dream. People have come to believe in the "Ameican Dream?" Over time, the phrase “American dream” has come to be associated with upward mobility and enough economic success to lead a comfortable life. Historically, however, the phrase represented the idealism of the great American experiment. If you ask most people around the world what they mean by the “American dream,” nearly all will respond with some version of upward social mobility, the American success story, or the self-made man (rarely the self-made woman).

     No less an authority than the Oxford English Dictionary defines the American dream as “the ideal that every citizen of the United States should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.”

    The idea that every person, no matter their present circumstance, could become rich if they worked hard in America, was not the norm. For most rich people during that time period, with money and status, wealth had been passed down from generation to generation. You had to be born into wealth. And if a person who had not been born into wealth and status within the country became wealthy, their newly acquired wealth was looked down upon for being “new money.” The American dream opened the possibility for anyone to become rich and gain status in the country.

    Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had this type of dream for America. His speech about a dream and vision he had for America became famous. The I Have a Dream speech, is a public speech that was delivered by the American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In the speech, King called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States.

    Martin Luther King Jr.'s “Dream” speech was a call for equality. It identified the faults of America and what measures were needed to make it a better place. A central theme throughout the speech was the importance of everyone being treated equally. His dream was a vision he believed was accomplishable if the effort and hard was put towards the goal.

    Successful people may have other things going for them as well. But they certainly have a vision. A clear dream, along with the courage to act and follow through, dramatically increases your chances of success. It has been said that if you aim for nothing, you will hit it every time! I couldn’t agree more. The Good Book says that without a vision, people perish. They run amuck. They live without restraint, giving their time and attention to whatever screams the loudest instead of what will get them ahead in life (Proverbs 29:18).

    Altruism or having altruistic dreams is the selfless act of helping others without expecting anything in return. It is often considered one of the defining characteristics of what it means to be human. The list of people in history who had dreams of helping others and the world at large is a short list. Their journey of following their dreams gives real meaning to they can’t go where you are going.

    Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of an America which embraced all of its people regardless of color and economic status and treated each fairly. Even though there were many people supporting his dream, there were many in opposition to his dream.

    Some of the major political leaders of the day spoke out in opposition to Martin Luther King Jr's dream and the demands of civil rights activists. Many prominent Democrats made the argument that African Americans should be happy with what they had, rather than asking for more.

    The majority of White Americans living in the South opposed King, but that reaction was not confined to the South. By 1966, a nationwide Gallup poll found only 33% of Americans had positive feelings about Dr. King. Seventy-five percent of Americans disapproved of the civil rights leader as he spoke out against the Vietnam War and economic disparity.

    White racial resentment was still a critical factor at that point. But Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s unfavorable numbers were at least 25 points higher in 1968 than in 1963, and his faltering appeal over the final years of his life was also a consequence of appearing to fall behind his times in some respects even as he was leaping well ahead of them in others.

    Martin Luther King Jr., born January 15, 1929, was an American Baptist minister, activist, and political philosopher who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. A Black church leader and a son of early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr., King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination in the United States.

    King participated in and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other civil rights. He oversaw the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he led the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize some of the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King was one of the leaders of the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his I Have a Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington D.C. The civil rights movement achieved pivotal legislative gains in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

    Dr. King met and lost friends and supporters while working to achieve his dream. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by national mourning, as well as anger leading to riots in many U.S. cities. King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2003. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in cities and states throughout the United States beginning in 1971; the federal holiday was first observed in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and King County in Washington was rededicated for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.

    Dr. King understood the dangers of him fighting for social change and equality. He knew many people wouldn’t embrace his vision for a different America. He also knew there would be people who were not going to be able to be a part of his dream and that he may not live to see his own dream come about. The knowledge of where his dreams may take him did not stop him from dreaming and working towards that dream.

    There are people who dream and have the satisfaction of living to see their dream come true. There are some people who know they will not live to see the realization of their dreams. There are people who cannot go where you are going. Sometimes to your death because of your dream. They can’t go with you where you are going.

    Reach for as many personal dreams you can acheive. Hopefully, while acheiving personal dreams, you will reach for altruistic dreams which benifits humanity. HAVE A DREAM.

***THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM A WORK IN PTOGRESS: "    They Can't Go With You Where You Are Going"

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