In Defense of Your Silly Hopes and Dreams

I recently spent a day in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom with my mom and my aunt. I ate the $14 chicken parmesan sandwich, which is just fried chicken on a roll with melted cheese and cold fries.

I used pretty much every restroom in the joint (I drink a lot of water). And, of course, I rode all of the classic rides and saw all of the old shows at a theme park that opened 50 years ago and is still drawing people in from across the world, even as it shows visible signs of aging – and an apparent lack of love and care from its profit-mad overlords. 

There’s a lot to love about the Magic Kingdom; there is a lot to hate about the Magic Kingdom. I’ll save the love for the YouTubers and the hate for your radicalized friend. I’m going to go a different route and talk about what the park made me feel as a nearly 40-year-old divorced and childless man walking around with my mom and aunt. 

I guess, all in all, the big message I got is that you have to dream your dreams, and, as the old song goes, your dreams can come true. And this all seems so silly to us in 2025 having lived through the War on Terror and COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter and 9/11 and all of that, but … there’s something to it. 

I went through a time in my life where I lost my hope and I lost my dreams, and it affected me at such a core mental level that I began to research and understand just how important hopes and dreams are to being human – and to our brains and bodies even functioning correctly at all. 

And there is this prevailing attitude now, fueled by mass consumption of social media, that we shouldn’t feel good about the future and that having dreams and hope just means you’re not paying attention. But I find this to be a profoundly unhealthy and incorrect way of looking at the world, even in the face of big problems like climate change or social injustice. In fact, it is because of those seemingly hopeless challenges that dreams and hopes and stories are that much more important. 

The thesis of the Magic Kingdom is best expressed in Carousel of Progress, a theater ride that Walt Disney conceived for the World’s Fair. The song, “There’s a Great Big, Beautiful Tomorrow,” written by the Sherman Brothers, says it quite well:

Man has a dream and that’s the start
He follows the dream with all his heart
And when that dream becomes a reality
It’s a dream come true for you and me

The Sherman Brothers were the sons of Russian-Jewish immigrants. They and their family knew full well the horrors of the real world. Disney’s movies first found widespread acclaim during the Depression era and his audience broadened even more during World War II, where he would work with the U.S. government to create anti-Nazi propaganda films. 

So, even though this stuff has become very dated, and trite and has mostly been used to make a big pile of money for shareholders, there is something in the very core of it that is important – so, back to the hope and dreams thing.

The only way I clawed my way back to the outer fringes of sanity was by, as my dad said at the time, “dreaming your dreams again.” This was an especially broad concept for a guy that mostly talks about tractors and cattle, but he knew it was so core to how we operate as people. 

I’m dancing around the subject, so let me be a little more direct: Our dreams have an outsized role in shaping our reality, not the other way around.

The Magic Kingdom is a prime example of this. A man, with the help of other men and women, builds an amusement park in the middle of the Florida swamp dedicated to the indomitable spirit of man and his love of storytelling. The fact that such a thing even exists is absolutely insane (especially considering the behemoth corporation that is Disney was notoriously cash-strapped much of the time when Walt was at the helm because he liked building and doing things a Hell of a lot more than he liked counting beans) and is an example of just how dreams can become reality (especially if you are at the helm of a major U.S. corporation). 

Much has been made of the “Disneyfication” of America, and there is much to be said and discussed about this. Dreaming your dreams is not easy. Things aren’t always getting exponentially better. There is an element to Disney and the Disney idea that is, well, oversimplified and rosy. Quite frankly, there’s a lot of bullshit to it. But there’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

Whether you enjoy Disney World or not is beside the point. What is worth understanding is that a lot of your dreams, good or bad, have a damn good chance of becoming reality. So, what are you dreaming about? Are you dreaming at all? 

In the middle of the 20th century, dreaming dreams meant dreaming dreams of technological progress and scientific achievement. And there is still plenty of room for that in our world today, but your dreams may be about seeing a city bloom with native flowers and plants. It may be for a child. It may be to paint and draw and make art. It may be to be more loving, more compassionate, more gentle and more kind. No mind what your dream is – mankind needs your dreams. Hell, forget mankind. You need your dreams. Take them seriously and take them with you. 

Man has a dream and that’s the start. He follows the dream with all his heart. 

What I’ve learned is that no matter how imperfect you are, no matter how much you’ve screwed up, no matter how hopeless you think things are, your heart is speaking to you. It may be speaking to you through anxiety or through sadness or a lot of other different emotions. But if you quiet yourself and listen for it, you’ll hear it. 

If Disney is too saccharine for you and you need something with a little more grist, consider that Emily Dickinson wrote a poem that declared “Hope is the thing with feathers,” or even pessimistic Charles Bukowski, wrote that “there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out … but he’s singing a little, I haven’t quite let him die.” 

Dream your dreams. Feel your own hope down in your heart and put it to work. 

Again, I can’t tell you what those dreams are or judge them in any way. That’s not the point. What I know is that on the way from your heart to your brain they are going to pass through the filter of your conscience. You’ll know you’re dreaming your dreams when they make you feel hopeful about the future – not that you can fix the future, but that you might be alright in the future. 

And when that dream becomes a reality – it’s a dream come true for you and me. 

Your hopes and your dreams are going to involve community and others and they are going to make the world a little bit better for someone – they may not change the world or make the world a better place. That’s a lot of weight to put on one person. But … there’s a damn good chance that they’ll add up with someone else’s hopes and dreams. And, slowly, your dreams will begin to come true. 

Now, you might not fly. You might not solve systemic racism. But those are more wishes than hopes and dreams. Remember that your hopes and your dreams are that little voice in your heart. Your hopes are a roadmap to your dreams. 

This has played out in my own life in a couple of ways. First, I tried to realize grandiose ambitions – to launch a business. It flopped. Then I got depressed and cynical and my mental health deteriorated. I hit the bottom. 

But slowly I started to listen to my heart – and I started to dream a little. The dreams were a lot different than my grandiose ambitions. They told me I’d like to feel well again, even though it seemed like a long road. But, my hopes encouraged me to go out and take a walk. A few months later I was running. A few months after that I was running 5Ks at increasingly faster times and losing my depression weight. 

They told me to journal. Then to write poems. And now I’m back blogging on my website for my friends and family. I’ve got a folder full of poems to edit and maybe even get published. I even wrote a few songs. I ended up writing more high-quality content in a year than I had in the 10 years before it. 

They told me to tell my friends and family that I loved them. A year later, I’m closer to my family than I’ve been in years and I just hosted a few of my friends over for charcuterie and a campfire – the first event I’ve hosted in 10 years. Hope is the thing with feathers.

Your dreams are your own to dream. Your hope is your own flame to stoke. 

Now, before I wrap this up I suppose I should say something about false hope and bad dreams. Hope needs an anchor – a branch, however wobbly – where you can catch your balance before you launch off on your adventure. Dreams need a journal – someplace to keep them and decode and encode their symbolism and meaning. 

Many of us Millennial types came of age in the Obama “hope and change” era, and a lot of us have mixed feelings about that, or at least I do. Hope got Disneyfied. I liked the way it made me feel, and it was an ideal I did and still do believe in. But so much of it was just air escaping from a balloon. We heard Silicon Valley talk about “making the world a better place” while tearing it apart in the name of the surveillance state and shareholder value. We saw the rich get richer and the poor get smothered. Politics and politicians are, more often than not, false hope. Regardless of what your algorithm or graduate professor told you, everything is not political. Your spirit very much transcends politics.. You are more than a voter. You are more than an activist. You are. 

Notice earlier when I talked about my business I used the term grandiose ambition and not dreams. These are different things. Not that there’s anything wrong with launching a business – and not that it can’t be a perfectly valid dream. But most dreams are about more than profit and most hope is about more than change. The heart beats faster for love. 

For me to have hope and dream again meant connecting with my spirit. No vision quest. No trip. I read. I sat quietly. I prayed. I read poems and Psalms and the language of the ancient heart. And I noticed when my heart began to beat faster. And I noticed when it calmed down, too. 

There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day

In my faith tradition this is best expressed as “His mercies are new every morning.” 

These ideas – that feel a little too simple and cynical in the hands of the Walt Disney Corporation – there’s something deeper there. Your heart is connected to so many other hearts. The missing part of your dreams are on someone else’s pillow. Your hopes don’t exist in a formless void. Disney got rich retelling old, old stories. I’m reminded of the song “Sadie” by Joanna Newsom – ”this is an old song, these are old blues, and this is not my tune, but it’s mine to use.” Oh, and “all day long we talk about mercy, lead me to water, Lord, I sure am thirsty.” 

So, again, thanks for reading another weird little post and my weird little blog. What have I told you? I’ve told you that sometimes you find inspiration in the strangest of places. For me, it was in a Fantasyland attraction waiting line, where I came up with the idea for this essay. I’ve told you that you should reject the dead end of post-modern hopelessness and embrace the soul-stirring narratives and stories of old. And, more than anything I’ve told you that if you want to find the path toward even the slightest bit of mental peace, you need to give your overstimulated brain a break and listen to the hopes and dreams of your heart. 

You have a dream. That’s the start.