Dreamers – Sunday, January 29, 1984
Every society has them: sometimes lazy, often undisciplined, perhaps a little drifty or unsophisticated, and always inattentive. These are the dreamers; those who dream by day, whose thoughts are filled with visions and fantasies. These are they whose work is often undone and whose lives are often lived in visionary glimpses of dreamy thought.
For these, the self-appointed castle builders of the world, the value of an act or even of a life is balanced only on the whimsical scales of myth and fantasy.
It is not for those whose feet are always on the ground to say why or how such a dreamer comes to be. Nor is it right for others to judge the merits of a dreamer’s worth.
No doubt, a world of only dreamers would be a world of chaos, a world soon ended from lack of daily care.
And yet, though in excess the dreamers might bring ruin to us all, in proper proportion, dreams and those who might bring dividends of a necessary kind. Like the farmer, who often in his mowing, turns aside to save a tuft of flowers—not for any practical result, but for their charm and momentary beauty; we too might do well to guard our dreamers.
In fact, it well may be that dreamers have given us back more than they have ever taken. For the dreamers of dreams are also the makers of music, the poets of songs, inventors of inventions, risk-takers, and the prophets of things to come.
Their works are not to be appraised in terms of the marketplace—there is no cash value for inspiration and creative thought. Instead, we give the fruits of dreamers other names we call their products symphonies and sonnets; paintings, ballets, sculptures; visions and prophecies. These have no cash value because they are priceless.
Our politicians give us security with government and law; our scientists present us with health and ease through technology, and our work force delivers us from want and necessity by means of production.
But our dreamers, our dreamers give us beauty, and more than that, they give us hope.
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January 29, 1984
Broadcast Number 2,841