What is more human than the capacity to dream?Alois was an unseen presence at the midsummer dinner party. Three couples, sitting outside on a deck under a double yellow-striped umbrella, talked about politics, traffic jams and the price of gluten free products. This being Australia, the women were positioned at one end of the table, the men at the other, engendering two separate conversations. The women focused on their children and the health issues of mid-life. The men joked and ribbed each other, as men do. Both conversations ran on paths largely tangential to the inner lives of the participants. Yet, Alois detected subtle verbal cues, inflections, body posture, omissions, hesitations, evasions and micro expressions. These and years of practice gave him an empathic skill almost like reading minds. He could picture what lay beneath the layer of words, like a geologist who can determine mineral seams by conducting soundings at the surface.
First was bearded Carlos, who came from Venezuela. His father had been a politician and Carlos hankered after the thrill of striding a larger stage than the management position he held in a mid-sized mining company. Alois pocketed Carlos' dream to be famous and influential. Richard's calling card announced him as a chartered accountant, a role he executed with finesse. However, like his father, he held little esteem for the profession of mincing numbers. His dream had been to shine as an artist, as a dancer or pianist or painter. He did not know which, this being part of his problem. At 41, he realised with sadness that an artistic path would not be his to claim. Alois added this thwarted ambition to his cache. The most outwardly confident of the three men was Howard, a portly but successful barrister, whose prodigious adversarial skills were rewarded by his clients. Yet by now, the drama of the courtroom was a game to be played, like a meal that he routinely ate, but had forgotten how to savour. He was aware that he craved to be loved, but sadly he had not developed any capabilities in that direction. He knew he was stunted. This too was added to the stash.
People had, for thousands of years, hoped and believed that their achievements would outlive them. In some cases this was true, but only for a limited time. On a larger scale, all human achievements evaporated. Time destroys all. What is left? Nothing but the library of lost dreams compiled by Alois and his fellow workers. Being immaterial, the library is not subject to decay.
Unlike the men, the women spoke frankly. Faye, in the long pink dress, had yearned to be a child psychologist, an ambition that was scuttled by motherhood, leaving an aching hole in her psyche. As she announced to her friends that she had discarded this dream, Alois added it to his collection. Patricia wore a boyish hair-cut. She possessed a singular gift for tennis and had envisaged a professional sports career, but a severed Achilles had derailed that ambition. Patricia was haunted by regret. Lastly, Veronika wanted to travel across every continent, but her precarious finances and timid nature did not allow this. She did not even venture outside NSW, which made her feel small and fraudulent.
Of course, the content of the dreams collected is of secondary importance. Their primary importance are the bitter-sweet feelings involved. The yearning for transcendence, to do what seems impossible, the urge to be more than one ever could be. However small the ambition, no-one dies in vain who has yearning in their heart. A boy who dreams of beating up a schoolyard bully may have a hotter fire in his belly than a Formula One racer.
Alois had a dream of his own: to find a single dream that captured the essential kernel of longing. Such a dream did not exist, because each person's desire was rooted in their unique personality. Failing to find it, he added this loss to the collection.
Love and loss are fixtures in human life and this is the legacy people leave when they die. Indeed, it is the only one that matters. The dreams collected are assembled into a polychrome mantle, containing every colour of the emotional spectrum. The ensemble is akin to the wings of a vast butterfly, with each individual dream being one of its component scales. The most passionate dreams are the most valuable and they shine most brightly.
Yet the library of lost dreams is more than a warehouse. It is nothing less than the ongoing construction of the supreme being, a passive consciousness that embodies every nuance and whose only function is to bear witness and empathise.