Field
of Dreams
We know it well. Picture this field as a vast plane, stretching to infinity. In it is contained all your hopes, ideas, wishes, aspirations, yearnings, and desires. Even faith has a presence. Many visit often. Some live there. Only a few have forgotten where it is. This field is special, part fantasy, part spiritual, part a plan, and part the solution. It is the place where dreams meet reality.
Each of us sees this field stretching before our present and future. For each, there are hopes, even prayers for those dreams to come true. Your field of dreams is a fertile plain, lush with flowers and grasses, but also with spines and thorns. because not everything growing there is what you want. To be avoided are those most tempting, the dreams of excess. We should thus call this short essay
Your Field of Dreams
Parents often say, “Sweet dreams” to their children on tucking them in. Before that, you dreamt of having children, healthy and able, good and happy. Before that, your parents dreamed you would grow up to be successful and happy. Yet, you, I, and every kid have had bad dreams and even worse. Consider a closer look into this field where there is no science, no politics, no economics, and no pathways. That is, let’s look at what’s in this, your personal field of dreams, too many of them not sweet at all.
Ideas grow aplenty in this field. Like shoots springing from the soil, they are easy to pluck. These are those wistful thoughts of what could work and what could come true. Every student doing a homework problem needs an idea. Every teacher working hard to communicate needs an idea on how better to teach. The advertising executive knows his/her job depends on a great idea. Just one could get you that big promotion, or that Nobel-level fame. We love ideas, though their similarity to weeds is proximal.
Bad ideas tempt us all equally to the good ones, in proportion at least ten to one. Initially, we cannot know which is which. Sometimes merely brain spasms, bad ideas sound and even are new. However, just because it’s new does not imply it’s good. Misconception? Yes. One good idea these days is the “work-at-home” trend. Workers from home, it is thought, can contribute to the company on a par with “work at the office” requirements. However, when the work-at-home employee begins to hit middle age and slows a bit, they may be easily discarded, without prejudice or remorse, in favor of the lower-cost office employees who have been working relationships for years. The idea of “distributed management” has yet to develop, but will it? The history of medicine is stamped with bad ideas, from blood-letting to assorted liver cures. The researcher roams from one bad idea to another until (and if) something good hits. Rulers lingering too long in their field of dreams to conquer often have brought their countries to ruin.
May
you discover all your bad ideas just that, sooner rather than later.
Think carefully before you light the candle of hope.
Desires grow hearty in the field of dreams. We see them far off and reach out to grasp what we think we want. Sometimes called “brass rings,” they make us leap to the max trying to reach them. Most fall short. Tennessee Williams, in his play, Streetcar Named Desire, co-mingles desire and dependence in the transition from the old to the new South. The ambitious politician desires more power for control of others. The businessman, money. The politician, power. The penitent, salvation. The sick patient, successful treatments. Most desires reflect a bit of selfishness, a pejorative trait we all have. Desires growing in this field compel the best and worst in us.
We all ride our personal streetcars of desire, but do we truly want the destinations?
In each, all appeal to our best qualities. Yet, all face their opposites through nightmares, bad ideas, false hopes, and crass desires. These, the spines and thorns in our infinite field catch, entangle, seduce, and deceive us. For most, too much corrupts, while too little strangles. In our field of dreams, it may be best to be Goldilocks, where the “just right” is best, or at least safest, or possible.
--------Looking Far Out
into the Field of Dreams--------
Farther out
in the field of dreams, where fewer venture, are the dreams of personal Eschatology,
or finality. It forms a partition where we ponder what may be coming past our
normal lives. Past death. First of all,
it is important to understand that in space-time, you will always exist and
live, even though your current time has expired. Regardless of religious
beliefs, this is an eternal fact of your existence. You may call it an undeniable
common bond between the most abject atheist and the most devout worshipper. Even
denying space and time, it remains in your field of dreams. It cautions us to
use our time wisely, knowing our lives are always on the record. All is
written, even if the universe collapses and is reborn. We may call this trans-universe
existentialism.
This is a
form of immortality you may wish to visit once again. Even though you may be unable
to continue consciously, you will always be. Others may see in their field a
future world of connections perhaps in some transcendental manner or even within
the kingdom of another world. Recall, your field of dreams includes fantasy and
the spiritual. Though inaccessible to some, these notions seem common to almost
all and are firmly positioned in your field of dreams.
Look deeply into your field of dreams.
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