A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Oscar Wilde

In this concrete world of constant pressure of be realistic, we need to preserve the spirit of our dreams. When the pressures of everyday life press on our minds, be it the bills we must pay or the responsibilities we have to our careers, we have to protect that corner of our minds from which our highest aspirations and deepest ruminations bubble. That part of ourselves that says, “There is more to life than this.”

We all know the feeling of this place. How it feels to lean on your desk at school, eyes unfocused as your thoughts wander near and far. How it feels to imagine something you wish was real. How it feels to desire that which does not yet exist. How it feels to yearn. And the ache of yearning, a pain that is so real. That deep, tender sensation that seems to tug you into the unknown, like an old friend taking your hand and encouraging you through swirls of mist.

We dream, and have dreamed, and in doing so have equipped ourselves with that irrevocable longing, a desire for something we cannot yet grasp. Like water we reach for it, and like water it slips between our fingers. Yet we do not give up. We keep dreaming. We keep yearning. We keep reaching.

To do this is to be uniquely human. To do this is to be alive and not a machine.

And to preserve this dreaming creativity is to preserve something heroic inside all of us, because while the world we see today is tangible, everything was once a mere figment of idea.

The books we read. The phone we take for granted. The vehicles we drive. The medications we ingest. The entertainment we consume. The music that stirs our hearts. The movies that make us laugh and cry. The creations that touch us every moment of our short lives. All of these are there only because someone thought of them first. Someone dreamed, and then created.

I am reminded of this by the words of James Allen. Penned over a century ago, long before the dawn of this hyper-technological age, they speak to the importance of this gift we carry within us.

“The dreamers are the saviors of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers. It cannot let their ideals fade and die. It lives in them. It knows them as the realities which it shall one day see and know.”

James Allen

Dreaming, and creating, is a lonely path. I know this as a writer. Yet there is something universal in it as well, a touching solace that extends beyond your solitary self. When you create, you do so not only for yourself, but for the world. And this troubled world desperately needs that. Because though one day we will die, and our bones will turn to dust, and that dust will reduce to atoms that will be incorporated into many other things, what we create while we live has the opportunity to become immortal. Not for fame. Not for fortune. Not for recognition. But merely to live on, through generations we will never see, as a gift from our truest hearts.

The importance of being one of these dreamers boils down to this:

“The world is beautiful because they have lived. Without them, laboring humanity would perish.”

James Allen

Whatever you dream of, cherish it. Dare to see it through, because you have seen the dawn before the rest of the world. You have seen something that no one else has seen, and can do something that no one else can do.

That is a gift.