What if you slept?
And what if,
In your sleep
You dreamed?
And what if,
In your dream,
You went to heaven
And there plucked
A strange and
Beautiful flower?
And what if,
When you awoke,
You had the flower
In your hand?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“What if…” Why do we lose the magic of “What if…” as we grow up?
As children, our worlds are made up of “What if…” and it is the world of possibilities and imagination. It is a time when anything is possible. It is a time when we can be whoever and whatever we want to be.
Dyer says that this poem is talking about the other time that imagination rules, when we are asleep. It’s when we are most open to wondrous possibilities. All kinds of weird and wonderful things happen and we are so much more than we are when we are awake.
There are those who practice “what if…” in their waking hours. Those people are the ones who change the world, even if only a small part where they are. It could be a simple change or a large one. It could be a world where I talk to you with words I wrote this morning or it could be a world where men have walked on the moon. These are things that happened because someone, or several someones, asked, “What would happen if…”
What if we each could bring that boundless imagination from our dreams into our waking world? What if we could change our attitudes about our lives? What if we could learn to have no doubt about the things we want, the way we want to live and the person we want to be?
What if…
3 responses so far ↓
1 The King // Oct 11, 2007 at 5:05 pm
I think even though we still continue to “what if” when we grow up, our questions change.
For a child the “what if” questions are full of imagination and hope while the “what if” questions for adults are mostly remorse for something they didn’t do. We look back at life and say “What if I did do this instead of that”?
But yes, if only we could make our dreams true.
No wonder Martin Luther King had “A dream”
2 stephanie // Oct 15, 2007 at 8:05 pm
I like your choices and I think you will like this one also. Now it either was sent to me or I discovered it one rainy day some time ago and it certainly made me reflect of youth and getting older.
You may read, enjoy and think here.
http://thinkofprosperity.com/2007/05/07/remember-this/
3 Aspen // Oct 16, 2007 at 11:21 am
Stephanie,
That was a great selection. I really enjoyed that poem. It went well with the piece I journaled this morning about seeing what is inside our bodies, the spirit, and not the external body that carries it.
Thank you very much for sharing that with me and everyone who reads this blog.
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