The hard work of dreaming:

The only dream worth having…is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead…To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or to complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget. (Arundhati Roy, from her book, The Algebra of Infinite Justice)

So beautiful – and such hard work!

To live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead. How much easier to be dead – while living; to dull your feelings and just cope; to settle and make do and forfeit life.
To love. To be loved. Indeed, so, so good – on both counts and so, so hard – on both counts!
To never forget your own insignificance. How easy to get caught up in our own stories, our own dramas, and have our (and others’) worlds revolve around us. How hard to see ourselves not as “less than” or “unworthy” but not as the center of the universe.
To never get used to the violence or disparity around us. How much of this do we take for granted every single day? It’s hard work and excruciating to see it, to let it soak into our consciousness, to let it impact us, to do something about it!
To seek joy in the saddest places. What needs be said, really?
To pursue beauty to its lair. I love this sentence AND I know how much easier it is to let beauty remain hidden or just hope it will find its way to me, be found in me vs. hunt it down and step into dangerous realms in order to be in its presence and invite it into mine.
To never complicate what is simple. That’s especially hard for me! Frankly, I think it might be my speciality: making complex and deep and weighty what might be just a simple (even if painful or difficult) reality.
To never make simple what is complicated. This isn’t my personal tendency as the former statement takes most of my energy, but its wisdom – nor its challenge – isn’t lost on me.
To respect strength, never power. This would mean that I would not only apply this to others, but would make the same choice for myself – to be strong without grabbing at power in order to have such. Easier said than done.
To watch. To understand. To never look away. To never forget. These are the criteria of dreaming. Each requires effort, intentionality, and purpose. Each requires hard work.

This isn’t the way we usually think about dreaming. Rather, we understand it as this unconscious or subconscious activity that doesn’t require our agency, action, or will. Arundhati Roy’s version is in pursuit of a dream that is completely conscious, requires our complete selves, and results in a dream worth having. I want those kind of dreams. And truly, on some level, I want to do that kind of hard work…because I know it will be worth it. Because dreaming is worth it. Because I am worth it.

I’ll hope for good dreams tonight as I sleep, but also the energy to work hard toward the conscious, intentional ones in the morning.

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