‘It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live’.
It is a warm spring day outside as I sit here, at my desk, contemplating the meaning of this quote conveyed by JK Rowling. Indeed it has swirled about in my thoughts for quite some time now, arguably as I try to garner some sort of phenomenal meaning from it. I am waiting for a realisation to hit me, suddenly, where the deep dark meaning from this quote becomes astonishingly clear. It is rather unseemly to me that I am not able to extract some degree of potency from this quote, as I consider myself quite able to grapple with literature. Yet, when it comes to interpreting this quote, I am hit with a road-block.
Is it perhaps because I subconsciously disagree with this quote at an intuitive level? I may indeed have a proclivity to dwell in my fantasy world and see nothing amiss with it, hence I refuse to accept this quote. Why shouldn’t I live in a fantasy world, I argue, considering my reality is listless, dull and unappealing? Isn’t there more harm in condemning oneself to boredom than to opening the mind to imagination? I remember coming across a psychological study that portended daydreams to be emotionally enriching and uplifting. Why should I surrender to a doomsday life when I can instead fill the seconds, minutes and hours with creativity inspired from my internal fantasy land?
The part of the quote that befuddles me is the ‘forgetting to live’ aspect. What on earth does this mean? It is not possible to simply forget that one is a living, breathing creature when they are inhaling oxygen all the time, when they have their tactile senses and proprioception constantly reminding them that there is a world around them. We are incessantly reminded that the clock is ticking, that people are moving around us, that people are going about their lives as we try and come to terms with our own. So there you have it — one simply cannot ‘forget’ that he is alive. And indeed I am taking this in the literal sense, it seems only logical I do so considering I took the initial half of the quote word-for-word.
Perhaps I am reminded of the importance of neglecting reality; this is true to some extent, however, how am I expected to save myself from a bitter reality if I am not given the freedom to run away from time to time? If I cannot inspire new meaning or purpose for myself by way of my creativity and imagination, if I am not able to break free of reality’s tyrannical chains and set goals for myself so that I am able to overcome a life of dissatisfaction, how am I expected to live in the first place? If I am not able to relax reality’s demonic hold on my person, my thoughts may become so ill, so disruptive, that I fear my life may end. I then may as well ‘forget to live’.
ethereal_dr 