Thoreau once gave advice to dreamers that still resonates: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” Dreams are meant to float above the ordinary; they are supposed to reach higher than what seems possible. Yet the work of living is in giving them ground, laying the stones of effort, persistence, and faith beneath those airy visions.
To dream is to accept both risk and responsibility. The risk is obvious:
dreams can collapse. But the responsibility is greater: to build a life that
honors the visions we dared to imagine. It means crafting a reality where joy,
meaning, and beauty have space to breathe.
The greatest writers saw this balance clearly. Thoreau himself suggested
that when we move confidently in the direction of our dreams, success comes “in
common hours”, quietly, unexpectedly, as the laws of the universe seem to lean
in our favor. Success, then, isn’t fireworks or fortune; it’s waking each day
to a life that feels authentic, elastic, and luminous.
The poet’s role in all this is to guard our dreams against false gods of
success. They remind us that real triumph lies not in domination or wealth but
in love, in wonder, in the refusal to grow bitter. They whisper that life’s
true wealth is curiosity, joy, forgiveness, and awe.
Castles in the air may seem fragile, but when the foundations are built
in the heart, they endure. And in the end, success is not what the world says
it is, it’s what your own soul recognizes as enough.
I hope my reflections encourage my friends and
family to nurture their dreams with care. It’s never too late to build
foundations under your visions and to step confidently toward a life that feels
authentically yours.
No comments:
Post a Comment