The Master of Dreams

Normally, when someone quotes a line from Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ (usually at a wedding) my eyes roll involuntarily into the back of my head. And not because of his now-infamous affinity for brutal colonialism. Because the poem is too good.

We all get it.

Quoting from ‘If’ is easy.

Every clause could be framed in the kitchen, or tattoo’d on an arm, or inscribed on a tombstone. They are series of timeless insights into the paradoxical human condition (written by a man who also believed it was the ‘white-man’s burden’ to civilise the ‘new caught, sullen peoples’ of the East Indies, as if to demonstrate exactly how paradoxical the human condition is capable of being).

But, still, I’m going to.

I tend to save my January introspection for the last week of the month. The first two I like to spend somewhere sunny and my birthday is on the 23rd.

So, this week, I’ve been wrestling with my ‘new year goals’ and a line from ‘If’ has been ringing around in my head.

‘If you can dream—and not make dreams your master…’

Having spent the last few years drowning in what used to be called ‘self-help literature’ and podcasts about ‘peak performance’ (whatever that might be), I’ve heard enough to know that it is a truth, universally acknowledged, that in order to achieve ‘things’ and be ‘happy’ you must have ‘goals’.

Some advise you to have long term goals - to envisage your perfect life, construct an elaborate mural in your house, stare at it for seven hours a day and manifest it into existence like a patiently determined wizard.

Others recommend small, stepping-stone style goals.

When I was a teacher, and management speak was really beginning to invade the educational sector, goals had to be SMART. I can’t remember what any of the letters stand for anymore, but the gist was that they had to be things you could actually do, in realistic timeframes, and you also had to be able to prove that you had done them (usually for the benefit of your line manager, who had to prove to her line-manager that you had done the things she’d been line-managing you to do, in order for him to prove to his line manager that… and onwards and up the chain of bureaucracy forever).

On the other hand, we are also constantly reminded about the need for ‘balance’. The importance of things like a social life. Relationships. Love? ‘Play’? I once listened to Brene Brown, Texan darling of the self-help scene, discuss the importance of ‘playing’ with Russell Brand in a YouTube video for what must have been half an hour, and I’m still not sure I’d know how to do it properly.

And I understand all that. It’s no good turning into some sort of human truffle pig, relentlessly foraging for one achievement after another, blinkered and sweaty, until you die. But how do you even quantify those healthy human experiences and prioritise them appropriately against your list of ‘goals’ Do you need to start journalling new ‘goals’ that will help you obsess less over your other goals?

And what would they even be?

    -  ‘Fall hopelessly in love by March’.

    -  ‘Have an emotionally revealing moment with a close friend this week.’

    -  ‘Pause to observe the moment a tiny bird alights on the sodden branch of a pine tree, and reflect on the fragiliity of existence.’

Like most people (apart from those fucking insufferable ones who just don’t seem to worry about any of these things and instead live healthily and happily, moment by moment, like my cat or the Dalai Lama) I have things in my life that I want to do, and be.

But I also don’t want my dreams to become my master and drain all of the spontaneity and joy out of the one life I’m fortunate enough to have been given.

We’re also constantly reminded that outstanding goal-achievers aren’t always the most fulfilled of people. Jim Carey once said ‘I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.’ However, I’ve also seen Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls. So who knows what to think.

So, I’ve decided to set some deliberately modest goals for the year. But, rather than hurdles to race towards and launch myself breathlessly at or over, I’m trying to think of them more like weathervanes. Signs, signals, that the wind seems to be blowing in the right direction. Clues that seem to suggest a bit of forward motion. And, as for life, I’m going to try and let it in with an open mind where I can along the way and see what happens.

I don’t know if this is the right strategy, but I can always reassess in the last week of next January when I’m sure the world will feel as eerily familiar, if just a little different, as it always does.

Keep dreaming,

Rob