We are such stuff....

There was a fascinating article in the Baconsfield today.. you can read it here: http://www.bakersfield.com/138/story/56277.html?

I have posted some excerpts below:

Schultz: 'Hold fast to dreams'
Batch Data Processor Friday, Jun 9 2006 7:55 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jun 9 2006 8:04 PM

When I was young, the recurring dream I had most often was one in which I was losing my teeth. I'd be dreaming along, minding my own business, eating a dreamy something, when suddenly a tooth would come loose, and would fall out of my mouth. Then another; and another. My dream self would be helplessly mystified as my rootless teeth filled up my hand.

Someone once told me that losing one's teeth in a dream signifies the real-life fear of losing one's children.

...

My friend, who was studying dream interpretation and therapy at the time, told me that I was subconsciously feeling smothered by the demands of motherhood, a negative feeling that was only able to be expressed in a dream.

Which didn't make me feel so good about myself. I decided that dream interpretation must be hogwash.

But looking back from the safety of years, I suspect that there might have been some small truth in my friend's assessment. I'd had three children in five years: in retrospect, those were some overwhelming days.

...

I have been thinking about dreams all week, because the director of the dance school that two of my daughters attend asked me to write about dreams for the program of this year's dance concert, the theme of which is "Dreams."

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Dreams are not real, but we have all had dreams that seem to our waking selves to be realer than real life.

Dreams are powerful, but intangible. Dreams define us and inspire us. Our dreams can stretch us or scare us, if we let them. "Man is a genius when he is dreaming," said the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who obviously put his dreams to good use in the crafting of his classic movies.

We can analyze our dreams or ignore them, heed them or dismiss them, write them down or forget them as we wake. We should always remember, though, that our dreams can give us strength, vision and courage as we walk the path of life.

"The future belongs," said Eleanor Roosevelt, "to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

...

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on," wrote Shakespeare, nearly 500 years ago, and he is still exactly right.

We are such stuff.

Dreams, like hope, like soul, are among the many lovely qualities that make us human. "I dream, therefore I exist," said the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, reminding us of the complicated dance performed within us by those sparkling and incendiary partners, mind and matter.

"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die,
"Life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly,"

wrote the American poet Langston Hughes, who, as a black writer in the first half of the twentieth century, knew a thing or two about pursuing his dreams in the face of difficult odds.

A civil rights visionary in American history, Martin Luther King Jr., repeated a stirring phrase in his never-to-be-forgotten speech in Washington, D.C., in 1963: "I have a dream," he said. Nine times he said it. He listed the ways in which his dream of brotherhood and sisterhood, in becoming reality, could change the heart and soul and workings of our nation.

We're still working on his dream, as we make unsteady progress toward the reality of equality for all in the United States, when we will truly be "free at last, free at last." We have a dream.
"To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub," said Hamlet, in one of his moods, pondering the last big sleep of life. Hamlet was concerned that perhaps the peaceful sleep of death would actually be disturbed by the kind of terrible dreams he'd been having.

But I prefer to think that, in the afterlife, dreams no longer fill any human need, as wouldn't the paradise of the presence of God be every dream come true?

We cannot know, but we can dream sweet dreams.