This is a short book written by Michael Fairless who supposedly lived rough in the early 1900s. One of the stories in it is about a young Irish couple, poor but happy and how the man sits beneath an autumn tree with his future wife and promises her a wedding dress and throws all around her leaves, to show her how wide and big it will be. The story ends years later in London, weighed down with poverty as he comes in to a tired wife, his mind broken, carrying an armful of leaves shouting, ‘Look Mary I have brought your dress my darlin’.’
Human beings need dreams, they drive us forward and offer us some reward for living, but not all dreams are achievable and not all achievable dreams are achievable for everyone. And in todays world dreams have been interwoven with money until they have become synonymous. So much so that some people’s dreams are simply to have enough money to dream.
This is beyond tragedy in a species that has imagination for our dreams are so much a part of who we think we are. The power of a dream is the same in all of us, the passion is equal and as consuming whether it be to get an entry into the Guinness Book of Records, to be the first astronaut to walk on Mars or to own a bank. Just because a dream affects many more people than just us alone doesn’t make it better, bigger or even more important.