Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Where do your Dreams go?



            Where do your dreams go when you die?

I have never been one to fear death. I’ve led a life of hardships and pain, both physical and emotional. My life has not been all bad but my worst experiences could be written and sold as horror stories. When nightmares consume your childhood what is so fearsome about death? Nothing. Death scares the young and the healthy. People have their reasons why they want to live but the real reason is primitive survival. The human brain in all of its complexity still operates from basic desires. A human wants to live so that it can reproduce and make more humans. All species need this urge to survive. Growing up sick and in pain alters your brain. Its natures way of saying “You wont reproduce so death is ok. You are allowed to die” This might sound cruel but anyone who has seen a nature documentary will know its true. Nature effects humans just the same as it effects animals.

            I am now afraid to die and strive to live. One day I found a light in the darkness. It was a boundless imagination that led me to my love of fantasy. I played in the fictional worlds of others. Humans created video games and books, they used their brains for something more than basic desires. They created these worlds and I was lost and entranced. In these worlds the hero won, the darkness could be fought and if you believe hard enough nothing can stop you. Memories of life funneled through creative process and turned into dreams. The Dreams written down and turned into fiction and the fiction sold and consumed. Once consumed the fiction is released back into dreams and stimulates the mind. The mind then begins to create its own dreams and its own fiction. What if that tree was sixty feet tall and contained an entire village of elves? Its not sixty feet tall and only birds live in it, but what if? What if the world was a better and more magical place? What if people got along? What if trying your best actually made a difference? The thoughts in your brain turn and focus. Your experiences color both your fantasy and reality. How you perceive people depends on how you were raised just like if I told you to imagine a drugtor you might think of something totally different than someone else. Others may just realize Drugtor is a word I just made up and not bother imagining anything.

            So where DO dreams go when you die? And why does my ability to imagine a dragtor make me want to live?

            Well I honestly do not know where dreams go and that is why I fear death. In my head I have my memories, story ideas, characters, dreams, goals and a whole library of random animal trivia. Its precious to me, I can recall times that I spent with my friends or family, moments long since passed that my brain keeps preserved for as long as I live. Happy moments and memories that make me smile to this day. I can create fictional worlds and characters in a day, I can imagine those places and if I close my eyes I can see every single place I have ever written about. I fear death because when a person dies, what happens to those precious memories and all of the stories they haven’t written yet? My fear is that they simply go away forever.

            Great authors through the ages wrote stories that are still read and enjoyed hundreds of years later, but what happened to the stories they didn’t write? All of the possible life they could have breathed into the world is now gone. All that remains is their stories, echoes of a mind that could create anything out of nothing.

            I do not fear not existing, not breeding, not being able to eat hamburgers, I fear not being able to tell stories.

            So what if I had to answer to my own question? What if I just wrote a happy ending? What if?

            When you die your dreams live on with you. The stories you wrote continue to entertain the living but all of the worlds you create in your head, the characters that are all secretly part of your own personality, your dreams, your wishes and all of the memories you hold so dear from your life, they go with you. They all travel with you to the next world.  a world of peace and happiness and a world where the heroes won, the darkness could be fought and if you believe hard enough nothing can stop you.

No comments:

Post a Comment

The long Night Walk

 It was a dark October night. A cold wind swept through the town, leaves blew through the air and the tree branches shook as if the trees th...