I decided to buy another domain site. (www.forthedreamers.ca) I couldn’t afford the .com site: someone takes pride in buying up every name possible and then charging a ton of money to give it to you. (If you have a great business name- I’d go and get yourself that .com spot immediately). What am I selling? As of right now, nothing. It’s not an especially lucrative site. In fact, it’s just an idea, floating around cyberspace. However.
It occurred to me recently that the times in my life where I have felt the happiest and most fulfilled were the times I was helping. In some way in my life, it was incorporated into my daily routine, giving me a larger purpose than picking the fuzz out of my own navel. They say this is true of communities, that by helping your neighbor/town/garden etc, you are really helping yourself. It’s one of the reasons I have only one job listed on my Facebook page: Community Pharmacy. I’ve held countless other jobs before and since, but to me, it was the only one where I felt I was making a difference. First needle exchange program in a Wisconsin pharmacy, a diverse workforce of ages, abilities, and identities, a place where it might say in the pharmacy notes give this man a hug, he is battling Aids…we did, willingly, and not just to him. It was a safe zone for many, and more than a few of the people I worked with those many years ago have never left. The Pharmacy is a co-operative: there are lots of votes and shared accountability and scrutiny of whether our investments were on the right side of humanitarianism. One of my favorite things that we did on a yearly basis? The Dream Meeting.
There were no rules at the Dream Meeting, where we shared our thoughts and future hopes for the pharmacy over dinner and drinks. Nothing was off limits, there were no rules – one could even delve into the realm of the fantastic. My favorite contribution was the anti gravity room, which I thought we could fit in just next to the supply room. Customers giving you a hassle? Day dragging you down? Just flip a switch and float around on your break, and come back feeling good. I still think this is a good idea. We had small dreams and big ones, attainable and not. But the point was not that we incorporate everything. The important part was to have dreams in the first place. By the very idea of dreaming you were allowing yourself to open up to the possibility, to let go of the notion that you were bound in any way.
I’m not sure what exactly prompted me to suddenly buy a domain name, except that it seemed like a good idea. I could create something that would be useful on a mental level. I’ve come to believe that this most likely isn’t a consumer-based website, that I won’t offer you products made by artists. I think it might become a safe space for people to share things. Ideas, hopes, plans for how to make a better world, or just dreams. Maybe a bit like PostSecret – where people mail in postcards of their secrets anonymously to then be posted online. It’s helpful to let go of things, to know someone out there will read them, be moved by them. In some ways it’s why I try to write. If I change one person, in even just a small way, and hopefully for the better, then I am doing my job. Even writers who don’t have this goal in mind change their reader. They insert a slice of thought the reader hadn’t had access to before that moment. Sometimes you can’t “unread” a thing, and you feel like you’ve swallowed a thorn, but still, it makes you bigger somehow. That thorn was not your own, and now you carry it, which makes you different. It makes you closer to someone else.
While writing this blog I bought a book, a YA (Young Adult) book that won all sorts of awards. Normally I don’t buy YA books but as I have a YA at home now, I thought I better school myself on some decent reading for him. It’s called The Marrow Theives by Cherie Dimaline, and I highly recommend it. A total coincidence – the premise revolves around the importance of dreams. I won’t tell you more, because I will ruin the surprise, but I will say you should read it if you like a good story with more than its fair share of dystopia.
And I would end here with a quote about dreams but that would be cheesy, and you already know the gist of it. They are important, they give hope and life in a space where you aren’t feeling it. Instead, here is my question – what have you dreamed about lately? I keep coming back to a dream about kinetic energy. In my tiny brain, we could figure out a way to harvest it, in tube stations, in high-traffic pedestrian areas, etc.
I dream that this becomes a reality, and I am alive to see it. Maybe after that, we’ll work on the anti-gravity break room.