On Dreams, Duty and the Sensibilities of the Everyday
The Date: 6th December 2020
Situation: Midway through G.K. Chesterton’s “Heretics”, finding solace on a deserted beach on a Sunday afternoon. Coming to the close of a tumultuous few months; full of progress and promise, but as your friend Nick Koning says, also with “the extra stressings that come with the extra blessings”. The multiple life tensions seemingly continue to collide as the internal capacity stretches, breaks, and then stretches again.
My life hasn’t seemed so full as it is right now. But the end is in sight. And all I want to do is to crash across the finish line and pass out for a few weeks.
“Shhhhhhhh”. The small waves whisper as they crash onto the shore and pass out back into the sea.
I look up from the century-old text to observe the sandy bay, exhale a sigh, attempt to inhale some of the peace and glance down again. Glossing through the text of an inconspicuously titled essay, “On Certain Modern Writers and The Institution of Family”, G.K. begins to argue points to me from beyond the grave. Points that I think are thought-provoking but not necessarily relevant to me at this time.
· That man, on a quest for identity, goes searching the big wide world for others like him – those people that truly understand him. Not those local simpletons who misunderstand his greatness. Not his family members who tolerate or treat his passions with contempt.
Right, okay.
· That man travels abroad to spectate other cultures to escape that personal reality – or in G.K.’s words, “He can visit Venice because to him the Venetians are only Venetians; the people in his own street are men. He can stare at the Chinese because for him the Chinese are a passive thing to be stared at; if he stares at the old lady in the next garden, she becomes active.” (Chesterton, 1905)
Okay, right. I suppose this is an aspect of my travels afar…
But it isn’t until I read these few lines that my mind begins to clock into full gear:
“We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour… That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one's duty towards humanity, but one's duty towards one's neighbour. The duty towards humanity may often take the form of some choice which is personal or even pleasurable. That duty may be a hobby; it may even be a dissipation… But we have to love our neighbour because he is there—a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation. He is the sample of humanity which is actually given us. Precisely because he may be anybody he is everybody. He is a symbol because he is an accident.” (Chesteron, 1905; emphasis mine)
“That duty may be a hobby…” I mouth as I read over the lines. And suddenly I dive into the rabbit-hole of my mind.
I don’t know how your epiphanies come to you. Mine seem to differ in delivery every time, but this one came as a stream of consciousness. Sometimes I need to write to process these streams, so naturally, I laid it out on Instagram and I thought I would relay it to you again, dear reader, in a new revision that is a bit more formed than my initial thoughts on the beach on the 6th December…
-------------
A Musing
I have had the privilege of realizing many of the dreams and ambitions I imagined for life in my twenties.
In some sense you could say “I’m living the dream”; not in a boastful sense, but of one of reflective humility. You remember the nights where you tossed and turned, the youthful longings and angst – wondering if you could ever do the things that stirred your heart and imagination. Occasionally you realise mid-moment that you’re doing exactly what you were designed to do; the fusion of a higher calling and an outcome, usually based in hard work. But often it’s not until after the fact that you realise you have just crested over the hill of ambition.
Living “the dream”.
And because of this, I now find myself in the phase of life I’ve dubbed “the reimagining”. It’s a slow process and it’s harder than I thought it would be. My first dreams seemed to come to me quite organically; now I find I need to dig through my learned rhythms of life, the comfortability of the familiar, the necessary responsibilities and the natural proclivity to reduce your aims as you age. Somehow the life you’re living that you dreamed of is no longer a novelty, no longer special: you’re wondering “what’s next?”
However I realise now there is a paradox afoot here. When you start out, “in the mundane”, if you will, you dream the dreams and wish that you could live your life beyond the bounds of your immediate sphere and immediate duties. “One day” thinking abounds.
However, when you start realising these dreams of yours – whether through providence, grace, through happy accident, meeting the right person at the right time, a stroke of genius, courageous decisions in the face of opposition, a stroke of luck and/or sheer hard work (but probably a combination of all the above – and I’m sure there’s more factors), you realise that living at this level is what was within you the whole time; it was where you were designed to live.
And living here, in the place of purpose and fulfillment, is no longer a dream: it has become your duty. The humanity around you – your neighbour - deserves nothing less than you living as you were designed to be. You deserve to live as you were designed to be.
It has become your duty.
And when the dream becomes your duty, you find yourself in a weird place: craving the mundane.
A night at home in front of the TV.
A meal with your loved ones, filled with laughter and delight.
The serenity of undisturbed nature.
The completion of a day’s honest work.
Reading the book for the sake of reading a book – not just to upskill or learn.
The moments of spiritual clarity and connection after a quiet moment with your Heavenly Father.
Perhaps what I’ve listed here as the mundane isn’t mundane to you, but I’m sure you have your version of it.
Be thankful for it, even if you haven’t achieved your dream yet. Because even dreams become duties.
And the mundane becomes a miracle.
And somewhere in between the mundane, the dream and the reimaginations are our lives in the tension.
------------------------
I left the beach that day a little more upbeat, a great deal more thankful, a little more poised in my resolve to push through the obstacles (that came from raft of good things) with an upgraded lens to view the responsibilities and tasks that lay before me.
A piece of my soul reinvigorated to know that moments like these are why I was put on the planet.
The people around me deserve nothing less than what I bring to the environments around to me.
The world needs you and I to bring to the surface what treasures are buried deep within our souls: it is not just a dream… it is our duty.
