On Dreams and Idealism

I have a very bad habit. I love to daydream. In recent weeks, when I'm driving by myself from one place to another I've somehow managed to develop the ability to literally drive on autopilot by following the car in front while my mind wanders off in a number of different directions.

My second bad habit is this, and I have often been chided on this, and that is my tendency to plan, conceive or dream things with a view of perfection or of an ideal. In my younger days it was about building the perfect LEGO town, which soon graduated into building the perfect base in RTS games and executing that perfect assault so as to bring the match to an end.

In BB, the SOP for planning for any event would follow roughly this time line.

Conceive of plan ---> Plan out in minute detail ---> Sleepless the night before ---> Realize entire plan has fallen apart within the first hour ---> Try desperately to jury-rig a back-up plan ---> Squeak through the even by the skin of your teeth ---> Rinse and repeat for next event.

Time would fail me if I were to recount all the setbacks and failures that I have encountered throughout all the years I was there. The hikes which never seemed to go as planned because they were too long or the weather was bad, the camps where the camp programme basically implodes on the first day and you're left scrambling trying to salvage the wreckage. The BS lesson where everything seemed to be in place, but the moment you got up to speak your mouth just seemed to be filled with sawdust. And at the end of it all I was always so thoroughly disappointed with myself.

Furthermore, much could be said of my life in general. That dream job/career I had when I was in still serving NS, that led me to choose my major in NUS, and of which I now look back and wonder what the heck was I thinking then. The dream of being great in life. The dream of being greatly used by God, when recent events have shown much of it to be hollow and selfish and baseless. The dream of being a great spiritual man, which is nothing more than pride dressed up in religious garb.

So many failures. So many disappointments. Perhaps that is why I am often so pessimistic and cynical of many things in life. Kinda ironic is it not? To be pessimistic and cynical yet still constantly dreaming of "great" things and perfect scenarios?

But there is one dream, one thing I can wonder about with all idealism, that I know will be much greater than I can ever conceive. As I was pacing up and down the street outside my grandparent's house a few days ago, I looked up at the sky above and down to the ground upon which my feet rested. I looked up at the sky and realized that there will inevitably be a day when I will see my God face to face. I looked down at the ground and realized that just as certainly as I was walking upon that tarmac road and feeling the hardness of the ground, one day I will walk just as certainly upon a street paved with gold and feel the hardness of that street on my feet as I walk.

Oh what will it be like there? Surely the greatest things our mind can conceive are but still an infinitesimal part of that perfect reality. Joy unspeakable! No more pain, no more struggling with sin, no more sorrow, no more disappointments, no more strivings against the flesh. Eternal bliss, eternal peace, everlasting joy, unending love! Such thoughts make one desire all the more to be done with this life, to say "Take me away with you now oh Lord!"

And yet here I still remain. But of all things, on this I will still dream on.