All Your Dreams Can Be Found On A T-Shirt
Published: Thursday, December 20, 2018
By: Bob Bitchin
How do those t-shirt logo writers always seem to capture the moment so well? Back some 25 or so years ago, I remember a t-shirt logo that said: “Reality is for People Who Can't Handle Drugs.” I remember we used to think that was funny. Back then. In the past.
Reality. What a concept. I can still hear people in my past saying to me, “Stop dreaming! It's time you lived in the real world!”
They were pretty messed up. Live in reality? Why would anyone in their right mind ever want to do that? Not me! Not the kid! I want to live in my dreams. They are a heck of a lot better than reality and, as Paul Simon once surmised, “If you took all the girls I knew when I was single, and brought them all together for one night, I know they’d never match my sweet imagination, and everything looks worse in black and white.”
I never did really test that scenario in reality, but the thought he was trying to convey in the poetry of the ’60s was that your life can never live up to your dreams. And, I had those dreams. I used to love them.
Then, one day, something that Bobby Kennedy said penetrated my alleged brain. It was 1968 and he said, “There are those who look at things the way they are and ask, why? I dream of things that never were and ask, why not?”
Okay now, I know some speech writer in a sleazy back room must have written it (that's reality), but it went straight to my dream center.
“Why not?” I dreamed aloud. Why not try to live a dream? At that time in my life, I was 24 years old and had worked harder than most since I left the service. I had achieved some success in my chosen field (marketing), and made what was considered good money in those days — almost $6,000 a year!
My dream back then was simple: load my stuff on a Harley, walk away from my business, and spend a few years partying and taking pictures of half-clad young ladies on motorcycles. Yet, it was still a dream. No way a kid from the streets of Encino was about to enter that outlaw world. It was crazy!
But, you know what? For the next 20 years, I did just that. I lived my dream. Guess what? It kicked the hell out of reality! But, even as I lived that dream, it started to feel as if that was my reality. As much fun as life was, it had turned real. So, I started a new dream. To sail off into the sunset.
Yeah, right! Like some 300 pound tattooed biker would be able to enter the world of yacht clubs and “cruising.” I knew I didn't belong. It was just a dream, after all.
And then, one day opportunity knocked... well, actually it was a hammer knocking on a nail, where a guy was putting a “For Sale” sign on a boat. Its name was Rogue. Perfect! It had to be destiny!
Living the dream is not meant to be a saying. It's not just a saying on the back of our t-shirts and in magazines. It's meant to be a way of life.
Wondering what has me so agitated? Well, I was watching South Pacific the other evening. In it, there is this silly little song by Rogers & Hammerstein called “Happy Talk” and in the song there is this one line that hit me right between the eyes. Now I gotta tell ya, I have been watching South Pacific since I was a kid and must have heard the song a hundred times in the last 50 years. But, that day, this line jumped out and bit me right on the ass. It went, “You got to have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”
There it was, slapping me right between the ol' baby blues! How are you ever going to make your dreams come true if you don't have any dreams to start with? All those people trying to tell me for all those years that I should live in reality were full of horse puckie!
I prefer living in a dream world. In my dreams, I am 40 years old and can still bench press 350 pounds. In my dreams, I am still able to bend over and tie my shoes and not look for something else to do while I'm down there. In my dreams, I can sail off into the sunset, to lands and people only seen in a dream, where it's rude to ask what a person does for a living, and where a janitor can be the most respected man in town.
You have to dream if you ever want to have a dream turn into reality. Sure, working and saving in the real life is probably a very good way to make those dreams come true... but, don't lose sight of the dream.
Just remember, like it says on the shirt, “Don't dream your life... Live your dream!”
Those t-shirt writers are smarter than mere mortals.
This article first appeared in the Year End Issue (Nov/Dec) 2018 of Great Lakes Scuttlebutt magazine.
tags: Feel Good Story, Lifestyle, Sailing
