It's About Dreams, but it's not ALL About Dreams... part 1

You may be thinking, "What does that title even mean?" And, "What's with the picture?"

I'll tell you, eventually.

First, let's look at a poem.  I'm sure you know it, and like me, may love it already. 

So much depends upon these kinds of things. If you don't know why, I'm not sure you have a soul. Well, maybe that's a little harsh. Maybe you just don't have a heart. But for the sake of less argument, let's pretend you are not the kind of person to make sense of things only with your head (which I'm sure you aren't, anyways). 

And now the poem:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams

I love William Carlos Williams (that's him above). I love his simplicity and ability (and choice) to see poetry in the everyday. I love his conventionality: he was both a writer and a medical doctor, keeping an established practice in his hometown of Rutherford, NJ for 41 years. He was married, and seems to have had a good marriage. She read to him when he was old and had had too many strokes to read anymore. He had two kids. 

And yet, he was a prolific writer. He wrote plays, essays, translations of other works, and novels. He was also the United States Poet Laureate and eventually a Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry. And as a major figure in Art and Literature, I love his unconventionality: he doesn't seem to have led a heartbreaking life as an alcoholic, he didn't commit suicide, he didn't leave behind a slew of broken relationships.

The reason I'm mentioning him today is not because he was perfect at balancing his artistic and "regular" life, which I'm sure he wasn't, but because his life as a writer gives me hope. Maybe you can do artistic things and not leave a string of tragedy and heartache behind you. Maybe someone can pursue a dream, and not let the dream be everything, not let it be a force that absorbs the totality of a person's life, relationships, and self. Maybe you can even have more than one dream: to do art and do life well. (And learn about colons: their use, their flare, their purpose).

Williams didn't just gruel out an existence at medicine to do what he really loved either. It appears he genuinely liked being a doctor, in addition to pursuing writing. It gave him access to people at their most intimate times, birth and death, and he seems to have loved humanity and American folks. He found a true American voice from the voices that filled his life. 

Literary Critic Randall Jarrell wrote, " Williams's poetry is also characteristically honest: There is no optimistic blindness in Williams, though there is a fresh gaiety, a stubborn or invincible joyousness." 

I love that: "A stubborn or invincible joyousness." That's what I want in life and art. 

Dreams are important, but they can't be all important. Despite the common thinking that you must throw your all into your dream  (at least among creative types), don't sacrifice your self as a balanced person, your relationships, your health, your other deeply held convictions. 

Don't pursue a dream at the expense of all else.

so much depends
upon
the rest of life. 
It's about dreams, but it's not ALL about dreams. After all, a dream can't read to you when you're old.