Beyond Imagination

Posted by masterwriter on January 9th, 2008

Dreams.  Not the sleeping kind. The I wish…I have always wanted to…If only….kind.

Our friend Adam came to dinner last night.  Mr. Jules cooked (a little heavy on the balsamic vinegar but anyone cooking for me is always one of my short-term dreams) whilst I took Adam on a tour of the house as he hadn’t seen it since we renovated the cowshed three years ago.  We had lost touch, as you do, so it was nice to welcome an old friend back into our lives, one you can feel comfortable with and have a whole evening to catch up on three years of news.

We got talking about dreams.  Adam revealed that he had always wanted to act and was interested in television presenting.  Funnily enough I thought his purple scarf was rather thespian when he arrived.  His dreams are partially coming true when he appears on the Travel Channel on 27 January.  Through his hobby of rally driving he met some producers who gave him a camera to video one of the races. He has no idea how it will be presented, how much will be shown but he does know that this is the beginning of a life-long dream. 

My dream is to entertain people with my writing.  To reach out to people and if I can get a LOL moment or even a snigger then I am the happiest person alive.  I went to a drinks party in December and a very kind lady came to me and told me that one of the reasons she was there was because she had been reading my blog and wanted to meet me.  That was it.  Christmas came early that night.  Hell, it made my year.

So there we were Adam and I two like-minded extrovert souls with possibly more of an inner life than was good for either of us, spilling over onto the table.   Mr. Jules was very quiet, chair pulled back from the table he watched.  Adam began questioning him about his dreams.  This is how the conversation unfolded:

“I’m living my dream.  I’m happy.”

“Define happiness to you.”

At that moment our son walks into the kitchen.

“I’m happy when my son comes into the kitchen and eats my fruit salad (sic!)”

Well we were having none of this, we teased, we prodded, we cajouled and I even inferred that if he didn’t have one he was a sad, miserable sod.  That did the trick. Rising above the hard-wiring of a Swiss education he stunned us all with a secretive,

“My dream is beyond imagination”.  He even backed this with a date for the start of this seismic event (of course he would). 

Without our dreams we are nothing with only a nightmarish contemplation of our reality.  Even the hamster on his wheel dreams of a little bungee jumping or perhaps some light paragliding.  

What’s your dream?

copyright julesritter january 08

My Swiss Family, The Swiss Man 2 Comments

Adam said,

January 12, 2008 @ 1:58 pm

Well, it’s not a cowshed exactly. More a peak of stunning modern design, with its use of natural materials and thougthful planning in the easy-going, functional layout with the happy Mr. Jules’ sitting atop the sturdy apex, master of all he surveys. Yours is a wonderful advertisement for the balanced, well-adjusted family life. A lovely home, a fulfilled marital partnership and healthy, polite and out-going children whom you no doubt consider as your greatest achievement. A delicious dinner – I most certainly did not notice a surfeit of balsamic vineager – on the contrary, the dinner could not have been more to my taste – excellent, and inspirational, thank you very much for a wonderful evening.

As for dreams: I spoke with one of my clients this week and came away feeling on top of the world. Not because I shall earn a reasonable performance fee for meeting the bank’s target returns last year (which I will put in reserve to help finance the employment of my first collaborateur), but because between us we created a better solution than either of us could have done on our own. And it was this sense of belonging, of engagement, of my ability to provide a valuable service to another that nourished and sustained me for the rest of the week. Instead of insisting that it was my way or the high way (often my stance) I was able to remain open to suggestions and that provided me with the opportunity to learn something about myself and enabled me to view myself in a different, more positive light.

I suppose that my dream is to find different and interesting ways of expressing myself – be that through the opportunities that business providies, through my relationship with my children and in my family life, or through sports, the daily practice of waking and sleeping, or through the performing arts or the written word such as my forthcoming book. 90% of the time I keep telling myself that I will be happy when (fill in the blank – but here’s my usual litany: chalet in Verbier, new Bentley Continental GT, DB 9, continental crossing 1931 8 litre Bentley, new institutional investment client etc) but occasionally I get shafts of light coming through the gloom of my usual disastisfaction – and I realise that I am happiest when doing things for other people – whether that is paid work or unpaid work. And I suppose my dream then would be to find different ways of doing that which leave me with a sense of fulfilled me and a well spent life. So what is stopping me from purusing one of the ways I know will bring me some fulfillment (and hopefully it will be of some service to others in some way) which is to write and perform my own songs? Fear. Fear of failure, of rejection, of ridicule. As Seneca said “It is not because life is difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that life is difficult.” I am daring a little bit more in 2008.

masterwriter said,

January 13, 2008 @ 9:16 pm

Shucks Adam those magic mushrooms we put in your stir fry obviously worked wonders!
Sing your heart out, j

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