Henrietta Hay's Column

Follow your dream! Sounds a little like the cliché of the month. But without the dreams that keep flitting around in our heads, we would never be able to survive this hazardous and often mundane life. I don't mean the kind we have while sleeping, although they can get pretty interesting sometimes, but the daydreams of hope and ambition and excitement.

The other night some good friends and I were sitting around discussing all sorts of stuff, everything from the School Board election and health care to Condude and mid-life crises. But most of all, one of us was talking about her dream.

She and her husband are Colorado natives. The closest they have ever been to an ocean is the Colorado River. But their dream is to sail from San Diego to Maine through the Panama Canal, and back again. Now all of us have dreamed about some wonderful things that we would like to do some day, but most of us know that they are dreams. This couple doesn't know that. They are building a sailboat in their barn.

This fall they went on a trial cruise. They drove to Seattle, and rented a sailboat to see how the whole thing would work. They had, of course, studied as much as they could about sailing, knew all about it in theory, but their experience level was zilch. The people who rent boats don't ask many questions, but my friends had one. "How do you get out of the harbor?"

They had a wonderful two weeks sailing (with occasional help from an outboard engine) among the San Juan Islands of the Pacific. Weeks later she is still walking on air - or maybe water - from sheer excitement. And they are continuing to build the dreamboat in which they seriously expect to spend two years seeing America from the rail. They do admit that they may be too old by then to haul up the sail, but they can still dream.

Most of us don't follow our dreams that far. We know that dreams and reality don't often meet and maybe we really don't want them to. Eric Hoffer said, "We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true: they ruin our dreams." But we also know that our dreams help keep life interesting, even bearable sometimes. Many of my friends are in their hectic forties, which is probably the most stressful age in our modern world. When they find themselves saying, "Whoa, stop the world, I want to get off," it's time to pause and smell the roses for a little while -- and polish up their dreams.

From the vantage point of my somewhat advanced years and mostly conventional life, I know that the dreams never quite go away. In my exuberant youth, I loved Edna St. Vincent Millay, she who is best known for, "My candle burns at both ends...." One of her verses dates me irrevocably, but I still like to think about it. "Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: / Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand." My dreams are different now, but although I have mostly lived on the rock, I still like to dream about the shining palace on the sand.

Long after the war Elizabeth Kubler Ross visited the remains of the concentration camp at Maidanek. She was awed by the messages drawn on the walls by the children who were about to die. They were not pictures of grim reality, but were hopeful symbols -- butterflies. Scratchings of butterflies were everywhere. The children's dreams were their hope.

Martin Luther King galvanized a nation with, "I have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: -- 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

"The American Dream" of freedom has lasted over 200 years and is still a part of all of us, although each of us sees it differently,

So follow your dream. You may never catch it, but the chase will be fun. Robert Browning said so. "Ah but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?"