The childhood home — one room where I grew up, and then the other room, once my brother’s, where I stayed with my own children for a time after my divorce.
Two kinds of shame: one as a child, and one as an adult. The shame of the adult takes an even tighter hold on the constraints of your manhood when it is shared with your own children. That differs from the shame you carry as a child yourself, growing up in the house of pain.
How you deal with the shame you feel depends a great deal on the audience around you.
Note
The trauma: CEN or childhood emotional neglect: CPTSD 
The father: authoritarian narcissistic
The mother: codependent, and lived in fear, but also looked away and did not protect
The ex-wife: also authoritarian with a need for control
In one room, you are the child
And in another room, you have your children who see 
Two rooms in the same bewilderment
The common denominator: me
The activities of a child versus 
The activities of a man
The comparison is poignant
But the shame still stands
I now understand my trauma
Unhealed wounds must be processed through connection
In silence, they fester unseen
So with this testimony, I raise my objection 
One shame is learned
One is self created
The burdens of inequity
When you point the finger at yourself – it’s related
The lessons of accountability
And the politics of shame
It’s extremely hard to point the finger
When the finger is pointed at your name
Oh how we justify
The economy of quid pro quo
Just what do we testify?
Sometimes, I don’t rightly know
Like sitting in your own church
Like sitting in your own pew
Just what will we receive?
Just what will we do? 
In childhood I learned to overthink
In adulthood, I did the same
I now try to integrate emotion 
The man, the boy, and the claim 
Over 50 years with living in silence
The reflection from the polished mirror, I am now me 
Why do I walk the mesa late at night, beneath the bell tower’s arch of sun-bleached stone? Why does the old campus glow so bright for one who walked away from it alone? I left my home at seventeen, so young, and paid my way with every dollar earned. Who heard the quiet hope upon my tongue each night I studied while the lamp still burned? Why is there always one more class to find, a room I cannot reach, a door that’s locked? Why does the schedule blur inside my mind while minutes slip away upon the clock? Psychology, philosophy, two roads I traveled far but never saw them end. Three classes short. Who measures all the loads a working heart must carry, lift, and tend? I married, and I worked for forty-one long years, and gave the best of what I had. So why, when all those working days are done, does one unfinished piece still make me sad? Is this the reason that the dream returns? Does painful truth play hide-and-seek at night, and wait behind the library till it learns I’m strong enough to face it in the light? And if I face it, what else might I find? That no diploma measures who I’ve grown? That every lesson life has left behind has taught me more than any class I’ve known? The past is history, so let it be. The future is a mystery, still unknown. But now, this very moment, sets me free, a gift we call the present, all our own. So if a dream keeps calling you by name, what hallway, what closed door, waits there for you? Perhaps it doesn’t come to bring you shame, but just to walk you home, whole, and new.
…
DCG
“If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.”
— unknown 
This was the dream. I woke up on the San Diego State University campus, wearing a very plush San Diego State letterman jacket, which I have owned in the past. I was surrounded by people, many of whom were from where I worked. The people I had my career with showed up throughout the dream, even though many of them did not attend San Diego State. We were sectioned off, almost as if we had been told to serve the campus community for some unknown reason. We were grouped together in square formations, almost like attendance lineups, or even in classrooms. I walked around and saw people from my job. I didn’t know why they were there too, because many of them did not go to the same school I did.
This dream, in some form, keeps coming back: me on the campus of San Diego State University.
Transcription “Here is the twist. I was three classes shy of getting my degrees at San Diego State University. One in psychology and one in philosophy.” Annotation: the two degrees would have been a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. A Revelation I left home at 17 and paid my own way through San Diego State University. I studied toward a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy while working full-time. I always meant to finish. But marriage and work took priority, and I spent 41 years with my employer. I ended up three classes short of both degrees, and not finishing those classes is my biggest regret. My education has always mattered deeply to me. That may be why the same dreams keep coming back. I think they may be my mind returning to the one important thing I never finished the way I wanted to. This isn’t a failure. It shows how much I still value what I worked so hard for.
A hypothesis on waking reflection, trauma patterns, and the possibility of becoming
Prologue: The Work of Looking Again This is not an argument that dreams are prophecy, coded instruction, or a perfectly accurate archive of childhood. It is a more modest—and perhaps more useful—hypothesis: when we examine dreams in waking life, we may find a temporary clearing in which old emotional patterns become visible. For a person shaped by developmental trauma, the past does not always remain in the past. It can persist as an automatic orientation toward danger, abandonment, shame, appeasement, isolation, or self-erasure. These patterns may have begun as intelligent adaptations: a child’s effort to preserve safety, attachment, or emotional survival when there was not enough protection, explanation, or comfort available. The problem is not that the child adapted. The problem is that the adaptation can continue long after the original danger has passed. Gabor Maté’s formulation is useful here: trauma is not only the event; it is also the wound that forms within a person as a result of what happened. In childhood, this inner wound may deepen when difficult experiences must be endured without a dependable adult to help name what occurred, regulate overwhelming feeling, or restore a sense of safety.[cbc] Dreams may not give us a literal replay of the past, yet they can present its emotional architecture. A dream may place us in an unfamiliar house, a lost city, a crowd, a classroom, a family gathering, an impossible journey, or a relationship that never existed exactly as shown. But beneath the altered scenery, a recognizable pattern can emerge: I am alone again. I cannot speak. I must rescue someone. I will be punished for being seen. I cannot get home. I must work harder to be loved. The hypothesis explored here is that writing down and reflecting upon such dreams can make these patterns more available to conscious thought. The dream becomes less a verdict and more a scene for inquiry. Rather than asking, “What does this dream prove?” we might ask, “What old emotional rule is appearing here, and does it still have to govern my life?” This approach is not a replacement for trauma-informed therapy, medical care, or sleep treatment. It is a personal testimony and a perspective open to examination. For me, DC Gunnersen, the practice has offered a way to meet old material at a distance—not to deny it, not to dramatize it, but to look again, with more adult capacity, more language, and more choice than I had when the original experiences occurred. A Waking Study of Dreams I have lived with the reverberations of childhood trauma and what is often called complex post-traumatic stress. I have known how the past can become a hidden operating system: working underneath ordinary life, shaping expectations, reactions, attachments, fears, and the instinct to abandon oneself before anyone else has the chance. For years, some of these patterns were not fully visible to me in daylight. They arrived as reactions before they arrived as thoughts. A moment of silence from another person could feel like rejection. A disagreement could feel like danger. A need could feel like a burden. A private shame could masquerade as a moral obligation to remain quiet, useful, agreeable, and unseen. Then dreams began to offer another kind of encounter. I have used methylene blue for several years and have noticed unusually vivid dreams, often remembered in striking detail upon waking. I do not offer this as evidence that methylene blue is a treatment for trauma, or as a recommendation for anyone to use it. It is not. In particular, methylene blue can interact dangerously with serotonergic medications and substances, and should be reviewed with a prescribing clinician or pharmacist who knows a person’s complete medication and supplement list.[fda +1] But the vividness itself led me toward a practice: I began to record dreams, sit with their emotional atmosphere, and ask what old pattern might be moving through a new story. The important insight was not that every image possessed a fixed symbolic definition. A locked door is not always “about” one thing. A childhood home is not necessarily a recovered factual memory. A threatening stranger may not stand for one identifiable person. Dreams can be strange, composite, theatrical, and irrational. Yet their emotional movement can still be instructive. A person may dream of being late, but the deeper experience is terror at disappointing someone. One may dream of losing a way home, while the living theme is disorientation after years of emotional neglect. One may dream of trying to speak but having no voice, and recognize an old learned rule: My truth creates trouble. My needs cannot be safely heard. The waking examination of a dream can therefore become an exercise in compassionate pattern recognition. It may allow a person to notice the difference between an old survival expectation and a present reality. That difference matters. What Evidence Supports There is evidence for the broader claim that sleep, especially REM sleep, is involved in emotional-memory processing. Researchers have linked REM sleep with the processing of emotional and fear-related memories, while PTSD is associated with disturbing dreams, recurrent nightmares, and disrupted sleep processes. This does not prove that every dream reveals a hidden personal truth. It does suggest that dreams can be connected to the emotional material the brain and nervous system are working with.[nih +1] There is also evidence that deliberately engaging dream imagery while awake can help some people with trauma-related nightmares. The clearest example is Imagery Rehearsal Therapy—also called nightmare rescripting. In this structured cognitive-behavioral approach, a person identifies a recurring distressing dream, changes the storyline into a less threatening or more empowered version, and rehearses the revised imagery during waking hours. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine identifies imagery rehearsal therapy as the recommended treatment for nightmare disorder and PTSD-associated nightmares.[va +1] Research does not promise identical results for everyone. Some studies find meaningful improvement in nightmare frequency, distress, sleep quality, and PTSD symptoms; others find smaller or mixed outcomes, especially among people with severe, chronic PTSD. That uncertainty is important. The responsible conclusion is not that dreamwork cures trauma. It is that intentional, supported work with dream imagery can be beneficial for some people and deserves serious consideration.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih +2] This matters because it validates a modest version of what I have experienced: a dream need not be obeyed, feared, or decoded as a supernatural message in order to become useful. It can be observed, written down, felt, questioned, reframed, and placed beside present-day life. The potential benefit lies in turning an automatic experience into a conscious inquiry. The Hypothesis of Reorientation My working hypothesis is simple:
When a dream repeats an old emotional pattern in a new situation, waking reflection may help a person identify the pattern, separate past conditioning from present reality, and choose a less self-destructive response.
This is not an invitation to overinterpret every dream. It is an invitation to listen for emotional repetitions. The questions that have helped me are uncomplicated: • What was I trying to do in the dream? • What feeling governed the scene? • What did I fear would happen? • What did I believe I had to do to remain safe, loved, or acceptable? • Where does this same rule appear in my waking relationships? • What would I want the adult self to offer the younger self who learned that rule? • What one present action would express a different understanding? The purpose is not to blame oneself for childhood adaptation. A child who becomes vigilant, pleasing, silent, detached, or excessively responsible is trying to survive emotionally. Such patterns deserve respect before they can change. But survival is not the same as freedom. The dream can become a private theater where the old rule is exposed: the need to appease, the fear of abandonment, the belief that love must be earned, the habit of disappearing before one’s needs become inconvenient. In waking life, one may then begin to build a different response: a boundary, a request, a pause, an act of self-trust, a refusal to chase what repeatedly wounds. For me, this is not merely dream interpretation. It is a form of reorientation. It is the slow recovery of an inner persona that was kept trapped—not because it lacked worth, but because it lacked enough room, witness, safety, and language to process what had happened. The work is to meet that former self with a mind that can now understand more, forgive more carefully, and live with greater authority. Perhaps that is what healing sometimes is: not erasing the past, but refusing to let its old instructions remain the sole author of the future.
A Poem: “The Dream Asks Again”
What enters when the daylight thins, And draws the old rooms into view? A child still listening within, To learn what fear once taught was true. Why does the hallway have no end, Why do I search for keys at night? What broken message did I send, To make myself become so slight? A face appears, then fades away, A door is shut without a sound; Did I believe I had to stay, Where love was never safely found? I wake and ask the dream its name, Not as a prophet or a judge; Perhaps it holds an older flame, That asks my heart to shift and budge. What rule was written in my chest, When no one helped me bear the storm? Must I still fail the secret test, Or can I give my life new form? The dream is not a map of fact, Nor proof of every wound I knew; It is a stage where shadows act, And show what old alarms still do. Can I look back without retreat, And name the fear without its reign? Can I stand calmly on my feet, And let the past unclose its chain? I was not made to always hide, Or beg for warmth I could not claim; The child I was still lives inside, But need not carry all the blame. So let the dream return at dawn, With questions I can meet awake; From what was lost, a self is drawn, And wiser roads are mine to make.
…
DCG
A Perspective, Not a Prescription This essay offers a hypothesis rooted in personal experience, established trauma concepts, and limited but meaningful evidence from nightmare-focused therapies. It does not claim that all dreams are therapeutic, that all trauma can be resolved through dream reflection, or that anyone should force themselves into distressing material alone. If dreams are recurrent, terrifying, sleep-disrupting, or accompanied by worsening anxiety, dissociation, depression, self-harm thoughts, substance escalation, or physical dream-enactment, professional support is warranted. A trauma-informed therapist, particularly one familiar with PTSD, CPTSD, nightmares, and imagery rehearsal therapy, can help make dream exploration safer and more structured. Still, I believe there is a possibility worth considering. For those of us who have spent years governed by unnamed patterns, the dream may offer a strange but usable gift: an image of the internal life that ordinary consciousness has learned to avoid. If we meet it gently in the morning—without superstition, without certainty, without self-condemnation—it may help us see what we have been carrying. And once seen, what was automatic may become discussable. What becomes discussable may become understandable. What becomes understandable may, little by little, become changeable.
Sources and Further Reading The following sources support the limited claims made in this essay: that sleep and dreaming are connected to emotional-memory processing; that trauma-related nightmares can reflect ongoing distress; and that structured waking work with nightmare imagery—especially Imagery Rehearsal Therapy—has evidence of benefit for some people. They do not establish that every dream has a fixed meaning or that dream reflection alone resolves trauma.
Morgenthaler, Timothy I., et al. “Position Paper for the Treatment of Nightmare Disorder in Adults: An American Academy of Sleep Medicine Position Paper.” Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, vol. 14, no. 6, 2018, pp. 1041–1055. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends Imagery Rehearsal Therapy for nightmare disorder and PTSD-associated nightmares. IRT involves revising a nightmare’s imagery while awake and rehearsing the revised version.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih +1]
American Academy of Sleep Medicine. “New Position Paper Recommends Treatment Options for Adult Nightmare Disorder.” 14 June 2018. A plain-language summary of the AASM position paper, including its recommendation of Imagery Rehearsal Therapy for nightmares associated with PTSD and nightmare disorder.[aasm]
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD. “Sleep Problems in Veterans with PTSD.” Explains that Imagery Rehearsal Therapy, also called nightmare rescripting, involves changing the content of a recurring nightmare to make it less intense or distressing. The VA notes positive civilian trials while also acknowledging that results have been mixed in some veteran populations.[ptsd.va]
Bishop, Thomas M., et al. “A Retrospective Pilot Study of Imagery Rehearsal Therapy for Trauma-Related Nightmares.” Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2023. Reports preliminary evidence that a modified, single-session imagery-rehearsal intervention reduced nightmare frequency and intensity, nightmare-related distress, and PTSD symptoms in a veteran sample. As a pilot and retrospective study, its findings should be treated as promising rather than conclusive.[ncbi.nlm.nih]
Casement, M. D., and L. M. Swanson. “A Meta-analysis of Imagery Rehearsal for Post-trauma Nightmares: Effects on Nightmare Frequency, Sleep Quality, and Posttraumatic Stress.” Clinical Psychology Review, vol. 32, no. 6, 2012, pp. 566–574. A meta-analysis finding that imagery rehearsal was associated with substantial improvements in nightmare frequency, sleep quality, and PTSD symptoms, with benefits reported at follow-up.[nih]
Hutchison, I. Claire, and colleagues. “Emotional Memory Processing During REM Sleep With Implications for PTSD.” Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2023. Reviews evidence that REM sleep plays a role in emotional and fear-memory processing and discusses how PTSD can involve recurring, emotionally charged dreams and disturbed sleep processes.[nih]
Walker, Matthew P., and Robert Stickgold. “Sleep and Emotional Memory Processing.” Sleep Medicine Clinics, 2011. Reviews research connecting sleep with the processing and consolidation of emotional memories. This research supports the general proposition that sleep can be relevant to emotional processing; it does not assign a fixed meaning to an individual dream.[nih]
Maté, Gabor. The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. Avery, 2022. Maté’s central formulation—“Trauma is not what happens to you; trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you”—helps frame trauma as an enduring internal adaptation, not merely a past event.[cbc]
Herman, Judith L. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books, revised edition, 2015. A foundational account of trauma recovery centered on safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnection. Useful background for understanding why paced reflection and supportive relationships matter in recovery.
van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking, 2014. Explores how trauma can shape bodily alarm, memory, emotion, and relational patterns, and discusses approaches to restoring present-day agency.
Fisher, Janina. Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation. Routledge, 2017. A practical, trauma-informed account of understanding entrenched reactions as protective survival responses rather than character defects.
Hartmann, Ernest. Dreams and Nightmares: The New Theory on the Origin and Meaning of Dreams. Plenum Press, 1998. Hartmann’s work is especially relevant to the idea that dreams may represent emotional concerns through images and metaphors rather than through literal replays of experience.
Hill, Clara E. Dream Work in Therapy: Facilitating Exploration, Insight, and Action. American Psychological Association, 1996. Presents an integrative model for working with dreams in psychotherapy through exploration, insight, and practical waking-life action. The approach emphasizes the dreamer’s own associations rather than an authority imposing a universal symbolic interpretation.[marquette]
Ullman, Montague, and Nan Zimmerman. Working with Dreams. Delacorte Press, 1979. A classic collaborative method of dream exploration that treats the dreamer as the final authority on a dream’s personal meaning.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. PROVAYBLUE (Methylene Blue) Injection: Prescribing Information. Revised 2024. Included solely for the medication-safety note in this essay. FDA labeling warns that methylene blue may cause serious or fatal serotonin syndrome when used with serotonergic drugs or certain opioids. Any use of methylene blue should be reviewed with a qualified clinician or pharmacist who has a complete list of medications, supplements, and substances used.[fda +1]
Note to readers: This essay is a personal reflection and a hypothesis, not medical or mental-health advice. Dreams do not provide a certain diagnosis, recovered factual history, or one universal meaning. Anyone experiencing recurrent nightmares, severe distress, disrupted sleep, dissociation, or worsening trauma symptoms should consider working with a licensed, trauma-informed mental-health professional or sleep specialist.
Its not every day we become inspired about something we have seen, heard, or read about and decided to act on that illumination. An inspiration that leads us to new discoveries and direction in our lives is a moment when we can embrace our values and challenge our spirit. Inspiration to take part in an activity or a personal decision on how we shall live our lives by a newly acknowledged creed is a rarity when it is carried out in practice. I can remember distinct times when I have become motivated by something that sparked my attention and the resulting effect has remained with me for years to come. Why these single moments of attention direct us to connect to something that enliven our experience of the world is essentially a wonderful and mysterious event, yet it is also sometimes a puzzling one since we do not always know the exact reasons for our interest in them.
We are often attracted to the charisma of people we are inspired by, or possibly the skill they have in their performance of some gifted ability that takes our interest. It could be a special circumstance that one has endured which led them to discover something about their character that brings out our piety. Whichever the case, the world has many illustrations of people, groups of people, and even cultures that stirs the emotive fabric within us.
An instance in my life is the connection I felt when I first listened to the blues. It was the first music that really “spoke to me” on a more meaningful level than other types of music that I had been exposed to. Initially I became influenced through my interest in other forms of music that also took their roots in the blues, before I actually recognized some of the earlier American pioneers. These influences also were previously revealed by my favorite guitar players thereby discovering the link of that influence. A specific interpretation of the blues through Great Britain with bands from the British Invasion reignited the interest in the blues for newer generations of youths as it had done so for me. My earlier influences of country, pop, and rock music, my interest in the guitar, my ability for empathy, and my personal outlook became the amalgam for a passion and inspiration that directly fed this stimulus. Understandably a process usually develops in this relationship such as; learning more about the topic, expanding your influences and further researching your subject, an increasing amount of participation, creating and building your own style or ability, and practicing and developing your craft are all personifications demonstrating that you have channeled this inspiration.
The simplest of games sometimes becomes the springboard for a dynamic passion that becomes a lifetime resolution. The factors that determine such innovations must meet more than just any ordinary arbitration’s of the mind and must have a certain resolve of purpose. These must somehow take grasp within our minds and spark something that awakens a passion for it to take hold and develop. Those passions that cannot truly be traceable to their origins because they capture the person from a surprise vantage point and tend to be mysterious to the observer often go unreflected. A viewpoint that has no expectation of their interest from first glance may just be the starting point for a spark to ignite something else unknown inside a person’s mind.
Unfortunately my thought is that many of us do not become inspired or do not hold the formula to launch their inspirations into action. The human spirit can also be hindered if certain conditions are not met for the individual. I see inestimable accounts of people not actuating their potentials due to the limitations of resources or simply just due to the impoverished states of their being. It may be that the psychological dispositions of many will impede any real progress within themselves. The levels of disintegration within our culture alone is worrisome when the topic of personal development comes to mind. The ramifications for misplaced civil atonement’s may also be the distraction some people are challenged by. The world is full of people who do not achieve their passion due to the limitations they place upon their ability for whatever the reasons. For a large part of the population, I trust that we as individuals are responsible for the psychological blockades we place on ourselves if we are fortunate enough to live in an environment that provides us with basic human rights. But the tenacity and fortitude of our determination and spirit still exists no matter what the circumstances of our condition and surroundings.
There are many examples of stories worldwide with many backdrops of social constructs and socioeconomic backgrounds that give precedent to show just how powerful the human spirit is. A case in point is to return to the origins of the blues.
The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known.Blues has evolved from an unaccompanied vocal music of poor black laborers into a variety of styles and sub-genres, with regional variations across the United States. The first appearance of the blues is not well-defined and is often dated between 1870 and 1900, a period that coincides with the emancipation of the African-American slaves and the transition from slavery to sharecropping and small-scale agricultural production in the southern United States.
The generations of abuse and mistreatment, the limitations of education, and the forced subjugation to social stigmas and ignorance has resulted in the emotive distillation of a human spirit that’s outcry was later heard all over the world. The magnitude of this voice heard in blues music by a people who had tolerated so much for so long has ironically descended upon and affected the world at large, and inspired many of us for many reasons along the way. I find it especially interesting that even under such pernicious circumstances, the emergence of the human spirit still emote a voice with echos of vindication, even after the repression and suppression on such a massive scale. You can impose and enslave a people, but it is extremely difficult to enslave the mind.
Henry David Thoreau pointed out in Walden that…“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance — which his growth requires — who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”
“Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins æs alienum, another’s brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other’s brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offenses; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.”
Henry David Thoreau famously stated in Walden that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” He thinks misplaced value is the cause: We feel a void in our lives, and we attempt to fill it with things like money, possessions, and accolades. We think these things will make us happy. When they don’t, we just seek more of them.
Thoreau argues that the value we attach to possessions and status is misplaced. They aren’t the key to happiness, and they may hurt more than they help. To him, happiness lies instead in a simple life stripped to the essentials. To find it, we must shed our false values and live austerely, with no luxury and only meager comforts. Thoreau attempted to do just that in his minimalist excursion at Walden Pond.
Thoreau’s basically right: Misplaced value contributes to “quiet desperation.” But it’s not the end of the story: it’s possible to value all the right things and still lead a quietly desperate life. What Thoreau’s missing is resignation. We lead lives of quiet desperation when we resign ourselves to dissatisfaction. Quiet desperation is acceptance of–and surrendering to–circumstances. Quietly desperate lives are frustrated, passive, and apathetic. They’re unfulfilled and unrealized.
So Thoreau saw most of the society of Concord as being unjust and burdensome. However, he also makes the case in Walden, correctly or not, that most people are creating their own problems, by subscribing to society’s burdensome rules when they don’t have to.
I think that most parents would want their children to be inspired and enrich their lives by following a dream. Following a passion that sustains goals and in turn inspires others in their lives is essential for growth and fulfillment. There is a fundamental human desire that compels us to aspire. I ask you, what do you dream about? What inspires you? Think about this from time to time. Many of us sometimes forget just what an impact it may have on us, our families and our children.
“Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”
― Albert Schweitzer
“Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.”
― Rabindranath Tagore
“What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.”
― Confucius
“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world–to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.”
― Ayn Rand
“Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”
― Leo Buscaglia
“He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes.” – The Buddha –
“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the single candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – The Buddha –
“Just as a solid rock is not shaken by the storm, even so the wise are not affected by praise or blame.”- The Buddha –
“Let none find fault with others; let none see the omissions and commissions of others. But let one see one’s own acts, done and undone.”
– The Buddha –
NOTE: This post was reissued due to the disruption of a WordPress server error. I have rewritten from memory the basics previously published from 5 days prior to this posting. It is unfortunate that I lost that post, my apologies to the reader, I tried to do justice in this post.
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