Man on Train: Hey, are you a dreamer?
Wiley: Yeah.
Man on Train: I haven't seen too many around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming is dead, no one does it anymore. It's not dead it's just that it's been forgotten, removed from our language. Nobody teaches it so nobody knows it exists. The dreamer is banished to obscurity. Well, I'm trying to change all that, and I hope you are too. By dreaming, every day. Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our minds. Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced, ever. So whatever you do, don't be bored, this is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting.
Great scene from a great movie. I used to dream a lot...both awake and sleeping. Still dream a lot when I'm asleep...hard to control that. But I noticed that I was dreaming less while awake...and that's a shame. I knew things were going the wrong direction when a college student friend of mine asked me a few years ago..."what are your dreams?" I kind of laughed to myself and thought "what a tool."
But the reality is that I was the tool. I had become cynical and sceptical about dreaming. I had become a tool of the industrial complexities of the modern economy. What had happened to the metaphysicality of my world view? I decided right then to rage against the mind-numbing machinery of modern existence. To quote another exchange from Waking Life...
Two characters bump into each other while traversing the stairs to a subway...
Soap Opera Woman: Excuse me.
Wiley: Excuse me.
Soap Opera Woman: Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant. You know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continously on ant autopilot, with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient, polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?' "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw. I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be ant, you know?
Naw...I'm not going to be an ant. I even preached along those lines last week at church. God invented dreams. He dreamed up all of existence. Ever notice how much of the Biblical narrative is driven by dreams and visions? If we stop dreaming then we lose an essential part of our humanity. A society that mocks dreams mocks God.
So last week my two-year old son gave me this elastic Lance Armstong style bracelet...except it's not yellow and it doesn't say "livestrong." It's blue and has one word on it...dream. That's it...one word...dream. So I've been wearing that lately to remind me to dream both while asleep and awake.
The whole "dreamer" scene from the movie Waking Life (1:18 in length) can be seen here...
