Dream A Little Dream: Human Perversity in Dream Building

Human beings are perverse critters. Only when they can find something wrong with an ideal can they claim it.

Here’s how it works: Think of a car you want to own. Sit quiet, mentally see yourself in the car, stretch your hands out and imagine how it will feel to grasp the steering wheel. Can you do it? Can you really really feel the car around you, smell the interior or feel the breeze from the air conditioner? Well, sort of.

Now, take yourself down to the dealership that sells those things. Go sit in the one you’ve been dreaming of. Now take a deep breath, smell the interior? Reach out your hands, grasp the steering wheel. How does it feel? Spongy?, hard, padded? How does your hind end feel in the seat? Your lower back?

Now that you know that, here’s the fun part.  What is wrong with the car? Are the drink holders in the wrong place for you? Hard to change the radio? Seat belts not where they should be for your comfort?

You see, it’s one of the perverse attributes of a human being that as long as something appears perfect and unattainable, all we can do is dream about it. Once we start finding things wrong with the thing we’ve dreamed of and longed for, it becomes much more real and reachable. It’s almost like we only feel like we can’t have something perfect. This bears further study and I’ll report back as I figure things out.

The same thing applies to a dream house. How many of us have an image in our mind of what we want, yet in our mind is where it stays. One of my clients is in search of the perfect home. She’s now on her fourth realtor and has driving the other three to distraction because none of the hundreds of homes they’ve shown her is right. There’s always something missing for her. She’s even purchased four homes over the years and sold them after living in them because the hold that the dream house has over her is so strong instead of just enjoying the homes she has.

You’d think, using my system, she’d have had 40 or 50 by now, but no, holding on so tightly to what is not attainable she’s missing out on all she could be enjoying.

Dreams are there to draw us forward, to strive towards a goal or make it through a challenge. We create them freely and often out of our dissatisfaction with what is and instead of changing what we can in the here and now, we put up and shut up and wait for someday.

But there is no someday. All we have is now. How many times have you seen people who spent their whole lives planning for that day when everything would be perfect and died before they could enjoy it? I sure don’t want to be one of those people and I’m sure you don’t either.

Live in the now. Create a vision. Live into that vision. Make it do-able, liveable, attainable and above all, enjoyable.