dream

In America, you’re urged to “chase your dreams” and “make your dreams come true.” If you’re doing well, you’re “living the dream.” But also, what did your parents tell you when you woke up from a nightmare? “It’s just a dream. Dreams aren’t real.” So… which is it?

The roots of the word “dream” stretch back to the proto-Germanic draugmas, which means illusion or deception. Chase your deception? Living the illusion?

It’s just a word, you might be thinking. But in anthropology, there’s this idea called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It says that words both reflect and define the scope of reality. My favorite example of this comes from Chichewa, one of the languages of Malawi. Kuchingamira means “to wait excitedly for a guest to arrive.” Isn’t that beautiful? It’s such a common feeling in their culture — ooh, I can’t wait for my guest to hurry up and get here!! — that they had to invent a word for it. Meanwhile, in English, it’s a clunky eight-word phrase.

There’s no Chichewa word for “bored.”

So what does it mean that we Americans conflate dream with desire? I think it subconsciously perpetuates this idea that our dreams are somehow separate from our “real” lives. What’s real is tangible: our cars, our houses, our phones. A dream is just something to talk about doing, not to actually do.

But what if you did? What if you pursued your dreams with the same focus that you’re supposed to reserve for school, career, and relationships?