"In Dreams Begin Responsibility"

I heard this marvelous quote in 1997 when Diana Hayden from India won the title of Miss World. The newspapers were flooded with the photographs of this beauty beaming in her resplendent gown. She quoted this famous poet in her speech at the beauty pageant. These words had left great impression on my thoughts at that time.

The other day, I recollected this quote, when I was having a conversation with my husband about dreams on our way to the Bay Area. We talk a lot when we travel (and we travel a lot!). The nature of my husband's work allows (read "compels") us to migrate from one place to another in every few months. This made us discover an ardent traveler within us. It is little arduous to pack and unpack things and search a new dwelling place, but only an enthusiastic traveler can cherish the memories of numinous experiences, diversity of climates and bizarre local laws.

So during this latest journey, we were telling our past night's dreams to each other and I recollected this thought about dream and responsibility. The grey cells continued to work and made me recollect a classic story ("In dreams begin responsibilities", by Delmore Schwartz) which lends its title from W.B. Yeats. This enigmatic story unfolds the narrator's ambivalence in his dream. Having been a witness to the dissonance between his parents, he wishes them not to come together. But later on he realizes that to have wished his parents not to marry is to have wished his own extinction. He cannot do anything to change the past but the future can definitely be under his control if he carefully chooses his course of action. Everything he does matters a lot.

The responsibility to make or break our future lies in our own hands and starts with a thought even in dreams. Dreams are the reflections of our thoughts which lie somewhere deep in our subconscious mind. Hopeful dreams and profound thoughts bring a sense of responsibility towards the course of action in reality.