If money, time and resources were not an issue, what would you want to do with your life? Realistically speaking, we may not be able to realize our dreams, but that shouldn’t keep us from sharing them anyway. Dreams give way to ideas, and sharing ideas brings them one step closer to reality. There’s no reason for people not to share their dreams. Maybe simply seeing them written out in a blog post could inspire you to do something to work toward it. Maybe someone who reads it will be inspired to keep pursuing their dreams. Maybe sharing your dream could lead to further insights you didn’t think of before. Or maybe that could happen for someone else who reads it. There is no reason to be a slave to reality. Being a slave to reality is one way to ensure that your dreams won’t come true. Why not give them another chance, even if it’s just a little one, and see what happens?
Tell me your dreams and let me write an article about them. I want this website to become a source of hope, a forum for ideas. It’s called Rambling Spirit because there is no limit to the ideas that could be shared here. There is no limit to dreaming, and we owe a little imagination to our reality-weary lives.
“The wind blows where it wills. No one knows whence it comes or wither it goes; so it is with those born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). It’s hard to pinpoint where the Holy Spirit is going to dwell. It dwells with those who are open to it, but in our fallen nature it is difficult for us to be open to the Holy Spirit for long. The average person is open to it sometimes, but I’d venture that even the saints weren’t open to it all the time. But when we dream, we open ourselves up to the power of the Holy Spirit, because we’re at least entertaining the thought that with God all things are possible.
The flow of God’s inspiration, the pattern it might take, is unpredictable. It’s of divine origin and therefore beyond us. The movement of the Holy Spirit is mysterious. It ebbs and flows with no rhyme or reason known to man. No one can explain why there is inspiration in one place but not another. No one knows why miracles happen and why they don’t. No one can come up with a formula for how the Holy Spirit acts. No one can construct a box to contain it. All we can do is remain faithful to God and committed to his commandments and his calling for us.
I know from experience that a writer can sit himself down at his desk every morning at 9 a.m., but that commitment is not going to result in inspiration every day. The commitment merely teaches us the discipline and skill necessary to capture the inspiration when it does come. But it’s a tragedy if the means to capture the inspiration isn’t there when it comes. I want Rambling Spirit to be a vessel through which people share their dreams, if only so that they are not completely lost forever. I want it to be the net that’s always skimming the sea searching for those who dare to dream.
We’ve become so caught up in realism and what can be done according to us that we’ve almost abandoned our passion and aspiration to be co-creators with God. That’s why he made us though. He made us so we can participate in his creation. That’s why we have dreams, ideas, ambitions, and visions. God wants us to create with him. We are in the sixth day of creation. God is still creating through us, still creating us. Jesus came to invite and usher us into the seventh day. We are God’s conduit, his vessel for creating. He has no body but ours.
The modern way of thinking has caused us to become so weighed down by the burdens of the world. We think it’s all been done, and if it hasn’t been done it probably can’t be done.
We’re so bogged down by what our dreams would require of us, the sacrifices we have to make, the people we’d have to connect with, the resources we’d have to gather, we’re often pulled down to the point where we don’t even bother to dream anymore. We just say, “Yeah, I once thought I could do that, but then I started a family and got a regular job and it brought in money. And it was all good enough so I just let go of my dreams,” or something like that.
I say forget all that. You can still dream whether you’re a kid or an adult or even on your death bed. There’s no harm in telling someone what you have in mind for the world, your biggest ideas. If you pass from this world before you get the chance to realize your dreams, there’s still a chance for someone else to pick up where you left off--even if where you left off was just telling Rambling Spirit what your dreams are.
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
To create, one needs an entrepreneurial spirit. When “life happens”, when we get a steady job, and have insurance and are raising a family, it’s easy to lose sight of what good we wanted to do in the world. Sacrificing our dreams to raise a family is noble, but when we let go of those dreams we are often forced to contribute to the very things that make it harder for other people to realize their dreams. The bigger the big companies get the harder it becomes for entrepreneurs to succeed, because it becomes harder to compete with the big companies. For example, if a small filmmaker makes a great film, it’s just a matter of time before a big studio comes in and buys the rights and makes the film conform to its studio’s standards. If an independent programmer programs a revolutionary computer program, a big tech company usually sweeps in to buy it.
Then the opportunity for more independent thought is crushed. The true entrepreneur aims to make his or her own way, to be self-supported, self-sufficient. In our modern society, we become so dependent that most of us don’t know how to survive without big government and big companies. The dream of the forefathers of our country was to build a society where we were one in liberty, but many in everything else.
We all have something to offer. Modern society has deceived us into thinking we have to become part of a system that just provides necessities while not supporting our dreams. There is a dream in every one of us that can help build a better society. That dream can make us interdependent instead of dependent. Instead of feeling stuck in a job because it provides all our necessities, how about offering others a greater hope for humanity by taking a leap of faith and pursuing our dreams? Offering someone something that comes from that deeper part of you may just end up supporting you just as much as the job you’re at right now. It may even eventually support you better, and open new doors you never thought could open for you.
Or maybe you love the job you have now and just want to stay on that path. Good for you. I just hope you have asked yourself what you plan to do if that job interferes with what you really want to do with your life, what you feel called to do? Maybe it has interfered already. Are your dreams worth at least a little more of a fighting chance?
A Free Market Foundation
When people talk about the free world, what they often mean are free market societies. These societies, like the U.S. and Hong Kong, were built on economies where the authorities exercised benign neglect. Civilization becomes dormant if there aren’t enough dreamers. I believe the people with power and influence in our society have put up too many barriers that prevent people from dreaming. We need to anchor society in creativity, or else we will lose our freedom. We need to encourage people to pursue their dreams, to start their own businesses, to become independent. If a society is not teeming with this kind of creativity, it cannot progress. It is bound to become subject to the whims of a select few who have the most power, money and influence.
If the majority of the world’s most advanced societies do not support independent thought and creativity, ultimately humanity will not progress. If you want to be part of a big company that provides security and does all the creative thinking for you, and you just do the grunt work, then that’s fine. But please don’t think a society that supports independent creativity is impossible.
In the age of guilds and true artisanship, when art literally overflowed onto the walls and ceilings of every church, library, and museum, there were a bunch of small artisans that served as the engine of an independent society: the village. The local blacksmith, tailor, and baker may have been part of a guild, but they were their own independent businessmen. Those people, just loving their work, and producing what they could, with their own resources and making a living off of that, proved it can be done. There was an entire epoch of history, the Medieval Era, where it was done. In fact, this was the system that built Western Civilization. They didn’t have big conglomerate companies. There were guilds and universities where you could train people in a trade. For some reason though, in our modern age we think moving toward a one-world everything is the way to go: big media, big tech, big pharma, big government, big everything. This leads to the mindset that we can’t do anything on our own.
I believe in the individual. If there is something that requires a bunch of people, then we can come together and be a bunch of people to accomplish it. But in everything else, we should aim to support ourselves and pursue our own dreams. Some people may even then still dream to own big companies, but my gut feeling tells me most people wouldn’t want that. Maybe I’m wrong, but I would assume most people just want to have their own business to support themselves and their family.
Whatever the case, people should have a forum where they can discuss their dreams. As far as I know, such a thing does not exist. So Rambling Spirit is here to provide that.
Email me at kilbyfreelancer@gmail.com and tell me about your dreams. You can write it all out in an article or just request an interview where you could tell me about them. Let’s just rekindle the forges of our imaginations.