He told me that the world was so eager to see my dreams crushed and thrown into the river with all the crushed dreams of those we pass by every day, and that the world couldn’t care less if I came up with a beautiful poem or a mesmerising piece of memoir or prose that tells the deepest stories in our lives. All the world needed was another prematurely dead ambition killed right by the words, “I can’t do it.”
I often get lost between the “can’t” and the “won’t,” between believing so much in an ordinary, mediocre dream that the extraordinary becomes impossible in a split of a second. Or, is it a decade? Do we really nurture our dreams or do we allow them to fade with time, if all that we do is let go of one dream after another, day in day out, as if we’re detoxing, and as though the older we grow the less we’re allowed to dream? I’m not sure, because some of us, like myself, get so carried away by the dreams of those around them, watching their dreams come true and doing nothing to give life to their own dreams. It’s like some people are born in this world just to clap for and applaud the dreams of those living around them that they forget, truly forget, they, too, can dream.
He told me this and paused, as if getting ready for the gist, and then went on saying that “if you don’t want to give the world something, give yourself the pleasure of writing, of telling so many people how much you can relate to their pain, their feelings, their fights, and their imprisoned words.” And then he cursed the world, and I don’t need to tell you how he cursed it, because we all do it the same way.
But he should have cursed the world first, before he said the words “dreams crushed,” because how crueller can a world be, crushing the one thing we live for? And why exactly is it eager to see such destruction?
I don’t remember the first time I felt crushed, and I’m not sure your realisation to a crushed dream is instant. It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, but slowly and painfully, until the whole f**king world sees it, as if you needed any attention. Then, you curl yourself in bed, sleep for as many hours as there is in a day, to forget about the world and try to pull yourself together to fight another fight, praying that the world has lost its enthusiasm to see another destruction.
And then he told me that every writer writes for one reader in his head, a reader that could as well be nonexistent, but, like musical notes not knowing who will play them next, a book doesn’t know whose eyes will fall in love with it tomorrow, and neither does a writer.
We write because words are the colours to an artist’s painting, the musical symbols to a pianist’s note, the dance floor to a ballerina, and the hat to a magician. Let us fold the world up in our sleep so that we can crush it with our dreams when we wake up.
And, finally, he told me, “the world can’t crush you if you have the words.”
