Dreamers are great people: It’s okay to be a thinker
Listen to this articleDreamers are great people. They often live life with their heads in the clouds and constantly seek out new adventures. They’re exuberance is often infectious, their friends are many, and their desire to add more hours to each day are constant. I am not a dreamer.
I am a thinker. I admit, I observe more life than I probably should and do not spend enough time just living it. However, I am okay with being a thinker and contrary to what many people interpret, we thinkers are dreamers too. We just tend to think about them more than we express them.
As a thinker, it is easy for me to express my thoughts and feelings about a wide variety of topics that tend to dominate our lives all too much. By now, you should know I have no intention of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. I am weary of the wars we have been fighting while at the same time feel that when military force is required to solve a problem, we need not burden our military with an excessive amount of rules of engagement or expect them to make friends while killing our enemies.
I try to look at life through violet eyes rather than red or blue and desire a government that governs in a consistent manner. I am not a big drinker and I do not smoke but believe we lack consistent laws regarding the health of our nation. If marijuana is dangerous and should be outlawed, so should booze and tobacco. However, at the same time, I am fine with legalizing marijuana since getting high on pot is no worse than getting drunk. Lets just be consistent.
As a thinker, I enjoy trying to understand people I do not agree with or who I do not follow the same system of beliefs with because I want to know why people think the way they do. While I cannot stand Ted Cruz and am no fan of Jerry Brown, I agreed with both when they campaigned for president on a flat tax system. This neither makes me the son of Lucifer or the lost child of Governor Moon Beam. It just means I can like some ideas of some people I generally have little or no regard for. Why? Because as a thinker, I take time to think about what others have to say.
Being a thinker has helped me to see the evils that can exist in any religion while teaching me the similarities that exist among all of them. While I think it is awesome people find peace of mind in their practice of a religion, I simply see life in general is easier to negotiate and affect if we all live by the golden rule, something believed in almost all religions of the world.
While I do not see Christ, or any other person for that matter, as my savior, I will ask myself, “What would Christ do or think about …?” With that in mind, I do not think he would turn his back on most of the people many “Christians” choose to abandon. I doubt we would force our way of life onto others who are seemingly content with theirs just so we can open up new economic markets for major corporations. I believe the United States would be a world sharer more than a world power and have stronger allies and fewer enemies in the process.
However, I also understand why we are the nation we are and can appreciate just how much we have accomplished in our short history.
As a thinker, I have dreams and aspirations, they’re just probably not the same as those of a classic dreamer. Rather than dreaming about personal experiences, I dream of the possibilities that we can accomplish if we all took a little more time out of our days to think about it. We can accomplish many, if not all, the social goals and desires of a Bernie Sanders while ensuring the safety and well being of our nation as expressed by a Donald Trump. We can be more open-minded to anyone and everyone who might be different than the norm while still being made to feel it is okay to practice and believe in more traditional values. The problem as I see it is most people just do not want to think about how it can be done.
Lately, I have been made to think of my own personal desires and wants. As a thinker, maybe I am different than other thinkers, but I have realized I have been putting some of my own dreams off for far too long. It has been easy for me to think of myself as somewhat insignificant when I think about the grand scheme of life. In the process, I have only focused on a fraction of myself that I should be focusing on while doing those things that cause me to think about other matters and that is not good.
Change is definitely in store and I do not mean in a political sense. Again, if you have followed my work you will know I really do not think in the long run it will make an immediate difference whether we elect Donald or Hillary because we make way too much out of the impact our president has on our daily lives. I am more concerned this election cycle with my more immediate world and how I want to help change it. I have also been asking myself whether or not I really want to put in the work necessary to feel good about where I currently reside or whether or not I want to pack up and move somewhere else, somewhere where I feel I fit in better. This is a life decision and not a political one; one that will have a far more lasting impact on the person I go on to become.
At this time, I have no idea what I will decide to do. However, I do know I will spend plenty of time thinking about it because after all, if I don’t, how will I know what my personal dreams really are?
Jim is a life long resident of California and retired school teacher with 30 years in public education. Jim earned his BA in History from CSU Chico in 1981 and his MA in Education from Azusa Pacific University in 1994. He is also the author of Teaching The Teacher: Lessons Learned From Teaching. Jim considers himself an equal opportunity pain in the ass to any political party, group, or individual who looks to profit off of hypocrisy. When he is not pointing out the conflicting words and actions of our leaders, the NFL commissioner, or humans in general, he can be found riding his bike for hours on end while pondering his next article. Jim recently moved to Camarillo, CA after being convinced to join the witness protection program.