#18

"We are the music makers.

We are the dreamers of dreams."

-- Willy Wonka

The human imagination is perhaps its greatest tool. As humans, we are able to conceive of things that cannot ever be accomplished by us, but that we feel someone else, at another time or another place, can probably do it. Also we can envision creatures that may inhabit this very world, or perhaps another, but that don't actually exist. The human imagination is limitless. From it, we get buildings, bridges, museums, paintings, poems, romances, fantasies, science... If I were to list it all, I'd spend the rest of my life writing words here, and I still wouldn't scratch the surface of what we humans can create with our brains. On a previous post I discussed the human imagination dealing with life outside of Earth, but it's also surreal to look at the things we have created for our own world.

Look at the fantasies we have surrounding it -- we dream of dragons, vampires, werewolves, elves, hobbits... We dream of magic, and we dream of science. One writer who often explores our current limits and lets his imagination fly around it is Michael Crichton, and he often hits some very good themes such as the idea of man creating Dinosaurs or of man finding a way to travel through time. Of course, his adventurous and best-selling heart turns all these ideas into long romance novels, which despite the great premises don't always become great books.

At any rate, we humans like to add the absurd to our reality. Movies, paintings, poems, stories, science, religion and fiction are only the tip of the iceberg of our imagination. (A little disclaimer here -- I'm not saying that science or religion are mere imaginations, but I'm saying that even what can be evidenced of these things came from an idea someone had about something, therefore being started by someone's imagination.)

One of the times where every human being delves as deep as they can into the world of their imagination is when they dream. Dreams deal with elements of reality, but they add to it elements of the dreamer, creating mind-bending combinations of people and places, of settings, names, shapeless forms and anything else you can or cannot think of. Despite all of its possibilities, dreams are personal. I'm not sure I'd be too interested in other people's dreams, and that's why I don't usually comment on my dreams to other people unless they participate in it. However, being personal doesn't mean dreams aren't marketable -- in fact the market for dreams is increasing. There are a number of books out there trying to tell people ways in which they can be more aware of their dreams, and perhaps even ways to control your dreams and what you do in them. The power of dreams make people want to have power over them. Like in that movie "Total Recall", where the character buys a "vacation " dream (and even in this it's not someone else's dream -- it's his own dream, with some elements inserted into it). But dreams can change people's lives. People fall in love through dreams, they talk to the dead, they make up with people who are no longer around them... It's no wonder people would want to control it -- such control would be almost like achieving omnipotence. But personally, I like my dreams the way they are -- out of control. What I love the most about dreams is that I don't know what's happening there, and that I don't know what's coming next. It can be disturbing at times, but if I was to control dreams to always be something nice and pleasant, then it wouldn't be the same. And even if I was to add some chaos to it, it'd be controlled chaos. Maybe if I take the unpredictability out of dreams, the next step will be to remove it from life as well. So I'll just let my dreams be, and I'll let me be my dreams... I wouldn't want it any other way.

(originalmente cyber-publicado em 18 de setembro de 2003)