Dreaming Encourages Trying
Dear [Mentat],
I understand. The same is true of me, you know. I’m getting older and no doubt less attractive. Controlling weight has become more challenging, I’m losing my hair, and I no longer have the rich man’s values that women say they’re looking for so much. Perhaps at some point down the road after a few thousand more rejections, the realization will hit on some profound level that this dream is too hopeless to pursue further. Maybe this has happened for you already, and I just haven’t reached your point in the continuum yet.
I may reach it, or not. I don’t know. I don’t care either way because the ultimate goal is complete fulfillment, whether we get that from involvement with a love partner, or a job, or a hobby, or from doing nothing at all. Right now, my best guess is that for me, in order to peak satisfaction, I must find my dream girl. Now repeated failures over the next few years could rewrite my life mission. They could remove my ardor for women and redirect it elsewhere. If that happened, I might regret it somewhat. But no more so than regretting, say, the disappearance of love for stuffed animals as a boy, that vanished as adolescence loomed. While the day would be sad upon which I’d recognize that I had no more lust for women, I concede that it would also have a liberating feel about it too. No longer would I have to endure rejections because I would have learned, as you suspect in your life, that there’s nothing at the top of that big hill worth the aggravation to reach.
But as long as the night visions continue, where I’m basking in some grassy meadow, with a gorgeous woman before me serving a picnic lunch from a basket, I’ll keep to my current path. As long as my head continues to turn involuntarily to follow a handsome lady walking by, I won’t abandon the longing. As long as the loins react warmly to the sound of a pretty woman’s voice, I just can’t turn away.
Rest assured though that I’ll follow the dream only as long as the dream continues to entice. I’ll chase it only until the universe discourages me definitively, by removing it altogether from my sight. This has not happened yet though, because while my chances of making this dream come true are admittedly slim, they are by no means zero as discussed earlier. Some beautiful ladies have found me intriguing in the past, and I suspect that more will in the future. The truest dreams know no practical bounds, and so I’ve got to continue chasing this one, until either it comes true, or goes away, or I die chasing it.
To borrow from the Bible, God lead the Israelites out of Egypt by day as a cloud and by night as a pillar of fire. Since freedom was what they wanted, they followed religiously (excuse the pun). Those who didn’t either got lost in the dark, starved, or were killed by Pharaoh’s army. The dream of the woman in the meadow is my pillar of fire, which I must follow as long as that fire burns. Wherever it leads I must go. I know you’ll balk at this. But I simply have no choice. I am locked on this path. It took twenty years to understand this profoundly, but understand it well I do today.
There’s a book called “The Dream Giver” by Bruce Wilkinson. In it, he explains the consequences of ignoring the fire. The idea is that essentially, we are slaves to our dreams, and to disregard them, no matter how impractical they seem, condemns us to living unfulfilled, ordinary lives. When I read it, it seemed like he was describing my life precisely; the empty victories, the devastating failures, the lacking sense of urgency, and elevated apathy and boredom when I was not actively chasing my Big Dream. In fact, I’ve borrowed some of his terms in these posts – Big Dream to be specific.
While not everyone has the same Big Dream, virtually all of us have some Big Dream; an underlying desire whose gratification is the central (though not always foremost) theme of our lives. This has typically been with us in some form for as long as we can remember. My Big Dream is like this. Even as early as kindergarten I was dreaming of those tall, slim teachers with the pretty legs. The fantasies didn’t involve sex until grade school, probably because prior to then, I hadn’t learned how to express the desires sexually, though sexual they indeed were. Even as a six year-old with a presumably innocent mind, I knew that sitting at the teacher’s feet really felt good, and having her give me kisses felt even better. I’ve always longed for closeness with beautiful women. It’s too bad I couldn’t have had Mary Kay LaTerno teach me at some point. 
The idea is that my Big Dream has been with me for so long and at times, been so fun, the only way I could ever give it up is if the fire goes out. [However,] as long as it burns, I must move toward it no matter the hardship through which it drags me. Though the good times it’s produced have been few, they’ve been enough to keep me questing for more.
