out of the blue

I am feeling completely content right now. I am excessively happy, but in a calm way. It seems odd…

Have you ever had that feeling?

I just read a part of a book in which something very cool and good happened, and things are looking up for our heroes at the moment. It seems that I've invested so much of myself in the book that I am even more affected by it than I am in movies, which isn't something that has happened much recently. (It happened a couple times while reading Stranger in a Strange Land, and during a couple of Dunsany's short stories.)

When I was young, I would throw so much of my mind into being inside the story that I was able to completely forget about the words. A bit of my consciousness was partitioned for the necessity of scanning each row of characters, but that seemed almost superfluous to reading. I would engage in many long happy hours where I found myself lost in Narnia, or Redwall, or any of my other childhood story-worlds. Sometimes, I wished I could just go away into those worlds and live there. Wouldn't it be wonderful to Impress a baby dragon? Wouldn't it be exciting to have talking bears as friends, or to dance with the satyrs at midnight under the unfamiliar sky? I always dreamt that I wouldn't be forced into the mundane job that my father had.

I always knew that it was impossible to launch myself into the skies over Benden Weyr, always knew that I would never set foot in Cair Paravel. So, I dreamt about the next-best thing: to forge my dreams into reality through the same medium that transported me worlds away during my free time. I wanted to become a writer.

And what do I do now? I study to become an engineer. I prepare myself to do nothing but make realistic dreams come to pass. One day I bring into being the mundane, never the extraordinary. Of course I might one day bring some more fanciful dream to pass, through my pursuit of the mechanical arts. I might just dream into being a better way for mankind to take to the skies, or I might even throw my will towards space and help tame that frontier. But what are the chances of that?

I dream. I wonder whether I could pass beyond dreaming.

Perhaps it is not my lot in life.

For now, I am content, because I partake in someone else's dream. But soon that dream will fade, and I will be left to my own imperfect strivings that never quite reach my desire to create wonders. Fortunately, these thoughts have not made me sad; I'm still just as content as before writing this, but perhaps more meditative.

Maybe I should pursue my vision, but for now, I will be content to echo another dreamer.