A very, very good friend of mine posted a picture today of his young son in a Captain America costume and quoted him as saying, “When I grow up, I want to be a superhero!” My friend, in his inimitable wisdom, replied to his son by telling him the following:

You already are, son! You can be whatever you want to be; go wherever you want to go. Fully pursue your God-given dreams with purpose, passion, and joy. Go and serve the world with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength!

T.E. Lawrence said, “All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.”

I have always been a dreamer, but if I’m honest with you (and myself), I must admit that I have done much of that dreaming at night. Lying in bed, though, fully awake, I will dream of the things that await me; I imagine the actions I will take; I plot entire books in my mind. And then I go to sleep, I dream of ridiculous things, like flying, or I dream of nothing at all, but either way I wake up, not ready to seize the day but, rather, tired or unmotivated, dreading the day full of challenges and hardships and ghosts of the past who haunt me every minute of every day, the dream often forgotten in the bright light of morning.

I want to be like my friend. I want to believe and act as T.E. Lawrence says. I do believe that dreaming with eyes open—i.e. planning out and living the dream; making it happen—is perhaps the most important key to our happiness. Few dream of working on a factory assembly line or scanning groceries in a supermarket or writing ten billion lines of code or even, perhaps, litigating cases in a criminal courtroom. Many of us find that we are living our parents’ dreams rather than our own. This is not to say any of the professions listed (or any other) isn’t honorable, necessary, and perfectly respectable as far as making a living goes (which we all must do, one way or another).

But wherever you are in your life, are you dreaming at night or during the day, when your eyes are open and your actions make a difference?

A year ago I took a leap of faith. I stepped out of a secure, high-paying job with a company for whom I had been a top-rated employee for twenty-three years of my life. I stepped into the waking world of my dreams. In the past year I have accomplished much. My sales are well over 600-700% what they were when I began this quest to act on my God-given ability and my own personal dream. I have tripled the number of books I’ve written and published, from two to six. I’ve increased my brand name.

But building a business—even one called “Author”—takes time. Lawrence does not speak of how many years, or even decades, molding a dream into a solid, defensible reality takes. I can tell you, for the average person (and I don’t mean average talent, or ability, or drive—I simply mean statistically), it takes a lot longer than you’d like and quite a bit more than you’d think.

I, however, still cannot imagine myself not dreaming the dream. It’s such a part of me now that in many ways I don’t view it as a “dream” or an “unlikely outcome”—I see it as a reality that WILL HAPPEN. But what does happen if the dream fizzles? What happens when I go back to the day job and the writing become a “hobby” once again (albeit a hobby that brings in a few extra bucks)?

If I can’t imagine myself without the dream, does “me” cease to exist? Am I reborn into an automaton who dreams of nothing but electric sheep? I can tell you that I don’t plan on finding out. I plan on staying the course, as far as the dream is concerned, even if that means waiting another 5-7 years for it to finally coalesce into an income on which I might consider retiring. And I will never let it become a hobby again. A side business, absolutely. One to be worked on daily, after the day job, and nurtured into a full-fledged dream accomplished.

But what is the answer to the question? If the dream dies, do you? I think yes. A part of you, anyway. It depends on how strong the dream is. Or, as Lawrence supposed, whether or not you dreamed with eyes open or closed. I’ve always dreamed with eyes open, even if it was night. In fact I’ve lost a lot of sleep lying there, dreaming, planning, wondering, wishing.

I won’t ever let that dream down. No matter how long it takes.

So the lesson, in this, my 199th blog?

Persevere. It takes time. It may take a LOT of time. But like geology, the most beautiful creations on this planet took the most time to create. Which, of course, then poses an even deeper question:

Does the Earth dream? And if it stops, will it slowly die? I hope the Earth dreams, and I further hope that we (ungrateful as we can sometimes be) are the product of one of those dreams.

A dream the Earth dreamed with eyes wide open.

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.

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