I should have been studying. But it was a Saturday, there was much on my mind, and it just wasn’t happening. After some quality procrastination and a brave attempt to wake up by way of a 45 minute shower, I decided to go on a walk. My mind and I walked out of the door, and it felt heavy. I threw the hood up over my wet hair as snow fell lightly down. Meandering into a favorite mountain trail I climbed to the top of a small hill and perched on a rock overlooking the traffic of Provo. By now, it was snowing in earnest, and the thick flakes kissed my face and soaked into my jeans. Life, that cold February day, felt like a cage. As I climbed down the mountain some time later, the slick snow slid under my feet and threw me to the ground, hard. Alone, breath knocked out of me, I looked into the swirling sky and thought, “ouch.” This existence brings pain.
Maya Angelou wrote,
“A caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied”
Lying on my back against rocks in the snow, I felt like a caged bird. Dreams die, and when they do they do not go gently into the night. They go kicking and screaming and their ghosts never quite leave you alone. Wanting to fly away from demands and pressures and stresses and boxes of conformity, now isn’t that a yearning that haunts us all? Uncertainties can feel heavy with their dark threats boring into the hope of the future, and perhaps this is why Shakespeare wrote that “expectation is the root of all heartache.” When the imagined life doesn’t mesh with the real life, the hurt is deep.
Charles Dickens, in his famous novel Great Expectations, creates the character Miss Havisham. Jilted just hours before her wedding, Miss Havisham spends the rest of her life in bitterness, resenting the heartbreak that destroyed her. Day in and day out she wears her decaying wedding dress. Her rotted cake festoons the tabletop and spiderwebs drape the corridors still decked with decor befitting what should have been a happy day. Her anger towards her lover infests her ability to love anyone else, and her hardened heart makes her cruel and wrathful, bent on destroying any love she can find. As dramatic and vindictive as the fictional Miss Havisham is, perhaps she is not so distant from any one of us. The reality of her life did not meet her expectation of it, and she would not accept it. She pushed against actuality until her bitterness consumed her, forcing aside any light of happiness that could have been possible. For her at least, expectation was the root of heartache.
Type “expectation vs reality” into any search engine, and thousands of images will flood the screen bearing witness of the fact that "life is not obligated to give us what we expect." It is the pain of living in expectation that puts us in chains and cages. It is the clash of what the imagination dreamed up against the reality of day-to-day life that can be so achingly difficult. But what is the solution? Is it submitting to the swinging pendulum of fate that knocks one around like a feather in the wind? Is it simply to see life “as it is?” To this Miguel Cervantes spoke in The Man of La Mancha: “I've been a soldier and a slave. I've seen my comrades fall in battle or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I've held them in my arms at the final moment. These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. No glory, no brave last words, only their eyes, filled with confusion, questioning "Why?" I don't think they were wondering why they were dying, but why they had ever lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? To surrender dreams - -this may be madness; to seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness! But maddest of all - -to see life as it is and not as it should be.” The madness, he asserts, is to cease expectation, forsake dreams, and live only in the emptiness of a harsh lucidity. Fallen dreams have landed me painfully on the ground to wonder, “why dream?” Would it not be easier to simply see life as it is and stop “beating ceaselessly into the past”?
I submit that there is a path between the bitterness of crushed hopes that marked the decay of Miss Havisham and the blind optimism that ignores reality. There is a place for the “why”/"should" of things happening and the “what” of actuality to coexist.
It might be called active dreaming.
Dumbledore said, “it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” But that is not to say that we should not dream. In fact, I think it is a call to dream. To dream fiercely and fully and loyally, but not to fall between dreams and illusions. Dreams inspire one to live deliberately. Illusions weave silver webs of nothingness that impede progression.
Dream.
Imagine.
Prepare.
Live.
This is active dreaming. This is paying heed to Paul’s plea to “cast not away therefore your confidence” (Hebrews 10). This is life that is lived deliberately, acting and not being acted upon. Active dreaming is hoping and imagining and seeing beauty, but then when landed on the back in the snow, active dreaming is getting up and creating that vision of beauty. It is making meaning from ground zero. It is taking raw materials and breathing life into them. It is singing with tears streaming down your face and it is being real with God. Active dreaming is sometimes saying “I don’t know,” but recalling that someone does. Active dreaming is not expecting to get, but expecting to give. Active dreaming is why the caged bird sings.
“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.”
This world does carry cages. Pressures come, heartbreaks come, stressors and pains and fears all come, but the caged bird sings of freedom, and freedom echoes the hope of Christ.
“Let your hearts rejoice and be exceedingly glad...for the prisoners shall go free” (D&C 128:22).
--Kristen
No comments:
Post a Comment