Mnemosyne

Dreams

I was thinking a whole lot about dreams yesterday. Are they just these airy-fairy hopes for the future, with no basis of truth or reality? Or are they tangible, maybe even - dare I say it - possible plans? But if so, then what makes them any different from goals?

It started yesterday when one of my closest friends in the world called me yesterday morning. Grace had finally returned from New Zealand where she had been studying dance the past three years. Once again, she calls me on one of those days that I decide to sleep in, so she still thinks I’m a complete sloth. Talking to her made me remember certain significant moments of our IJ days – dreaming. Not just the daydreaming that takes place when the teachers started to drone on and on in class. Not just the simple phenomena of our minds wandering when nothing else seemed to interest us in the heat of the day.

I’m talking about the moments we talked about what the future held for us after we left IJ, after we left the whole Singapore education system; where we then stood in the world. I remember those conversations that the two of us, together with Cheryl, had during time between lessons. Grace, of course, wanted to be a dancer. Cheryl had amazing passion for theatre and drama. Me, being fickle as usual, couldn’t quite decide between the visual arts and music. But on the whole, we had the same dream; we wanted to do something different with our lives, something special that we loved and wanted to share with the world. We did not want to jump on the bandwagon, join the rat race, or climb the corporate ladder.

We wanted to build our very own Arts School. We talked about the different faculties that we would have, and even what we would like our school to look like. Oooh yes, there was no harm being ambitious. We wanted our school to be located on the top of a cliff, overlooking crashing waves – ala Malory Towers. It had to have this terrific gothic castle architecture, and be totally isolated from the hustle and bustle of Singapore life. Well, it certainly didn’t hurt to dream.

More than five years down the road and it’s time to take a peek at where we are right now. Grace got a fantastic scholarship to studying dance, left after her A levels, and is now back in Singapore, ready to start her career. Cheryl was very much involved in the local theatre scene, before leeaving for New York to study theatre. As for me, I’m doing the good ol' fashion Arts degree. Oops, wait a sec. Arts and Social Science degree. Ok, political science to be specific. Dreams really do change. Right now, the closest thing I have to a dream is to become a writer. Everything else falls under that really convenient category: “Hobbies”.

It’s not that I’m unhappy. In fact, I do love my life and where I am right now. But sometimes I wonder, maybe it was only I who was dreaming. My friends had tangible goals. The line between the two is thin, and yet the boundaries are clear. I still often find myself drifting off (also known as my screensaver mode), wondering how things would be if they were different, if I had made different choices along the way. Not just in the whole “What I want to do with my future” sense, but in other ways too.

So perhaps it’s true. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary.

Enough of the dreaming. Time to live.