LR Midterm 

Discovering a Dream

    Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream of a socially just America.  Jane Eyre had many dreams, but of a more typical, Freudian kind.  King’s vision and Jane’s sleeping experiences are two entirely separate concepts.  However, there seems to be important grounds for their common label.  Indeed, the connection between the two usages of “dream” seems almost natural, perhaps due to their shared ability to overcome reality.  Martin Luther King’s dream clearly disregarded the boundaries of reality.  He saw the world without segregation, racial prejudice, or social injustice at a time when this vision was entirely unrealistic.  Jane’s dreams also escape the constraints of reality. For example, in one of her dreams, Jane hears a “white human form” say, “My daughter, flee temptation!”(1)   Further emphasizing their connection, both kinds of dreams elicit a real-world response.  King undertook a crusade for justice and equality because of his dream, and Jane decided to leave Thornfield.  Nonetheless, the precise connection between King’s and Jane’s dreams remains unclear. 
    Discovering this connection is particularly important to me because I do not experience sleeping dreams, and I feel that this affects my ability to develop a vision like King’s.  The last dream I can recall occurred a few months ago, and the one before that, years ago.  Until very recently, my lack of nighttime imaginings had not concerned me, and I had begun to believe that people mostly fabricated their dreams.  But, college students, who obsess over sleep, frequently affirm the apparently common phenomenon of dreaming.  Furthermore, my psychology class thoroughly reviewed the essential function of dreams and discussed lucid dreams, which are so vivid and realistic that they are hardly distinguishable from waking life.  It seemed that everyone in the class had experienced such subconscious adventures, although I could hardly imagine what they might be like. 

    Finally recognizing the prevalence of dreaming, I have begun to wonder, and even obsess, about why I have been deprived of this particular mental activity.  “Perhaps, the ‘dream-machine’ in my brain functions poorly,” I thought.  “Or, maybe my inadequate imagination simply fails to compose dreams worth remembering.”  Unfortunately, these pseudo-physiological explanations of my condition were never satisfactory.  Infrequent introspection-sessions left me with a vague but powerful feeling that my dreamlessness was merely an effect of a deeper problem.  Dreams are essentially electrical storms in our brains that trigger stored memories that we subconsciously piece together into a narrative.  This activity seems to indicate an innate creative ability to connect fragments of information into coherent patterns.  I am concerned that I somehow lack this ability or have suppressed it. 
    What worries me even more is that my dreamlessness is related to my experience of waking reality.  Just like my consistent failure to piece together a dream-narrative, I have trouble meaningfully arranging my memories. Most people I encounter, when asked, “Tell me about yourself” do not hesitate to present a coherent account of their lives starting from memory number one.  The meaningful structure of their personal histories always astounds me; the dots connect.  However, I have no such history. My attempts to piece together my life-story consistently fail to produce much more than a collection of disconnected and unorganized events.  Often, I forget large pieces of my life altogether, like that I was a boy scout or was best friends with my backyard neighbor Fiona.  I continually feel obligated to create a personal narrative, although I am unsure whether one exists.  For nineteen years, time has passed by me, gradually picking up speed.  I failed to reach out and leave a mark every so often, dots to connect.

    My passive perception of time is dangerous.  The great dreamer Martin Luther King Jr. understood that, “Time itself is neutral…. We must use time creatively.” (2)
Human history does not piece itself together; bold men and women actively direct its course.  However, people do not generate such world-changing action ex nihilo.  Martin Luther King’s dream was so powerful because it was a projection of himself.  His childhood experiences of segregation, religious devotion, and belief in the inherent dignity of mankind led him to formulate his grand world-changing vision.  Without such a coherent understanding of my life experiences and personal values, I have no way to discover my dream. 
    Reassuringly, although I lack dreams, I have pieced together a vision that will use time creatively. I plan to become a doctor and volunteer with organizations such as Doctors Without Borders to provide health care to poor communities in third-world countries. I want to help establish clinics and health education programs around the world and to recruit other health professionals to join this global cause.  Worldwide health should be an international priority, and I will crusade to make it so.
    Although this vision is certainly satisfactory, I have no sense of where it fits within my personal history.  A strong and driving vision should represent the culmination of my life experiences in order to direct my creative use of time.  Like Jude Fawley admitted, “It would have been better never to have embarked in the scheme at all than to do it without seeing clearly where I am going, or what I am aiming at.” (3)   However, I struggle to clearly envision my destination and aim.  It seems that a vision like King’s requires the ability to connect the fragments of ones life into a cohesive experience of reality that has both an origin and a destination.  Perhaps this integrative ability necessary for forming a strong vision illustrates the link between vision-dreams and nighttime dreams. 
    As I consider my failure to dream in both senses of the term, I realize that my insufficiency may not solely be my ability to connect the fragments of my experience.  In my psychology class I have also learned that everyone has dreams, although some people don’t remember their dreams. My barrier to creating a vision seems to be my insufficient integrative memory of my life experiences.    When Stephen Dedalus tried to reconstruct his memories, the “memory of his childhood suddenly grew dim” (4).  Although I can identify with Stephen’s experience, I feel that a genuine effort to integrate the events of my past will lead to a clear understanding of where I should head in the future. 

These are pieces of me.  Through free-association, I remembered these parts of my life and now it I my duty to connect the dots:
    I have always considered Catholicism to be my foundation. When I was a small boy, it took me a while to understand why Fiona didn’t go to church because it was such a stable part of my life.  When I was in middle school, I thought that I had figured out morality.  I reveled in my profundity after writing “A life without sin will set you free.”  It made so much sense at the time.  Finally, the pinnacle of my career as a Catholic, I attended Strake Jesuit, where I formed my sense of responsibility to promote social justice.

    My mom wanted me to be a doctor since I was little because I was “good at math and science”.  I always thought I might as well be a doctor, but actually never considered another career until my junior year of high school, when I resolved to be an architect.
    Then, it happened. My vision came into focus. This occurred when I meditated on my memory of being a volunteer at a week-long muscular dystrophy camp.    Soon after arriving to the camp, I met my 16 year-old camper, Marcus, whom I spent the whole week with.  A camper for the tenth year in a row, Marcus was the camp celebrity and unrivaled “ladies’ man.”  His optimistic attitude and light-hearted sense of humor won the adoration of anyone who has ever known him, including all of the good-looking female counselors.   In an unanticipated reversal of roles, Marcus became my counselor, helping me come to terms with the conditions of his fellow campers who all had the muscular degenerative disease in varying degrees.  Once, Marcus caught me gazing sadly at Stephen, a camper who seemed to be wasting away before my eyes.  Marcus leaned over his wheelchair and patted me on the back. “It’s okay,” Marcus said, “he’s still smiling.”  Sure enough, he was.
    The memory of my experience at the Muscular Dystrophy camp caused me to remember Mr. Nevle, the principle of my high school, giving the charge “To be men for others.”  Everything finally fit together.  I recognize where I am going.  My life should be committed to social justice and service of others.  I saw the smile on Stephen’s face, and the hope on Marcus’s.  At that moment, my vision had changed.  I wanted to be a doctor again and share in the struggle of others and bring them hope. 
 

Endnotes

  1. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (New York: Penguin Group, 2003), 358

  2. Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (American Friends Service Committee, 1963), 9

  3. Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 107

  4. James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York: Penguin Group, 1977), 98
 

Works Cited

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Penguin Group, 2003.
 

Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
 

Joyce, James. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Penguin Group, 1977.
 

King, Martin Luther Jr. "Letter from Birmingham Jail." American Friends Service Committee, 1963.