Dreamer

(George Dunlop Leslie, Roses)

Unashamedly, I admit to being a hopeless dreamer. I enjoy creating worlds and friends in spare moments. I am often found gazing out windows or at the ground, for I've flittered off to a different time and place. Sometimes, I'll even dream up conversations, surroundings, and histories for my own, real life acquaintances. Few people I meet travel through my mind without me inventing some silly or serious fantasy about them. (Have I scared anyone yet? ;-) ). I love being a dreamer... most of the time.

Then there are days, like today, when my dreams are shattered. Perhaps shattered is too strong a word -- scratched, marred. Actually, the accurate description is that I recognize what my dreams truly are: dreams, nothing more.

*Before going on, at the risk of implying too much, I want to make this clear: I do not currently have or desire a romantic attachment to the subject I here describe. In the flirtatious and presumptuous society we live in, women describing men in admirable lights or their admiration for them is highly flammable.*

I know a young man who is charming, witty, and down-to-earth, yet at the same time he is thoughtful, deep, and intimidating. All who know him respect and adore him. When my thoughts strayed to him, I didn't need to create admirable qualities for him. Granted, plenty of enhancing and assuming occurred, something along the lines of, "Well, he's so this, so he must be that. And he associates with them, so he probably thinks that." I fitted him out and plopped him up on a white charger then stood by to admire my picture. My world seemed a more beautiful and nobler place because he dwelt in it.

But, armor rusts and knights fall. I overheard some gossip about him today, and the stories that issued from one clucking mouth to the other did not line up with my dreams. A principle I dreamed he had and a practice I dreamed he hadn't were, according to the latest, totally reversed. He didn't grossly sin or commit an inconsistency that could justify my abhorrence, but his real lifestyle failed to match my golden creation. Down he plunged.

After consideration, I recognize that his actions were far less surprising than my response to their discovery. I felt disappointed, frightened, and even betrayed. Why? Is he not allowed to be who he is? Why must he fit my mould? He doesn't have to. That is the answer. We all know that humans are sinful and will never live up to the holy standard. Indeed, my personal standards are far from perfect, so fantasizing that others hold the same ones and then feeling scandalized when I find that they do not only brings about harm.

My dreams are nothing more. They are not reality, but sometimes I wish they were.

Sometimes it really hurts to be a dreamer.