Within the Chamber of Our Dreams

 “Today, I can’t help but think of all the dreams I had in this world. As a child I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut. As a teenager, I aimed for something reachable, a novelist. As I reach my early adulthood and realize that I’m still living with my mother after all these years, I thought of becoming something more practical, something required in the current society: a programmer. Needless, to say, I didn’t become any of these things. I didn’t become a programmer who created the best AI in the world. I didn’t become a novelist that could surpass Charles Dickens. I didn’t become an astronaut who went to the moon and pioneered a living society, because today, programmers don’t even create AI’s that could reinvent the world, writers don’t even write stories that could inspire the world, and astronauts don’t even go to the moon anymore, because today, we’re all grounded. Not by gravity, but by the very chambers of our dreams.”

I think, more than anything, we are entitled to follow our dreams. Just like any human being, we are free to our pursuit of happiness. However, happiness and dreams don’t really have a true guide and that everyone at some point will realize that their dreams and aspirations are in a one-way street and the end of that street is only a clear dead-end.

My next story is close to my heart and is something I’ve been willing to write but never had the chance to. It’s not only close to my heart but it also strikes home. The story is set here in the Philippines and it will show some of its culture and how much the entirety of it is an illusion. It is certainly something that I haven’t done at all and I know that it is my prime weakness.

I haven’t written anything about my country, I avoided the idea of writing about it for a long time, simply because I don’t know how I am to approach it. Many writers start from their own country’s language. Sadly, I can’t even write with my own language. I am ashamed of it and that’s why I had created a character that mimics my path in my story. Someone who felt lost in identity and in culture. A child from two colliding worlds, in which, he can only choose one, but by choosing, he leaves the other for dead.

Additionally, the story is about hopes and dreams. It shows the foundation of it, how it changes, how it destroys and manipulate lives. It is important to see more than just main character. It is important to see the other characters that exist in the story. Their existing lives and how they came to be.

Dreams are living creatures that requires to be fed and they feed through a lot of things in our lives. We perceive them as something that is ours but (and I believe some may agree with this) in reality, they are ones who own us. At a given point in our lives, we are a slave to our dreams, serving it, feeding it, housing it, giving it anything it wants, and in return, we gain almost nothing. Not until we reach it. When we reach it, there is still more suffering involve as we continue to preserve it, but at a given point, it is something that we already know what to do.

I have dreams for myself and I have dreams for my country. But every dream requires sacrifice and sometimes what I dream for may not be the same dream that my country has. We are in a pivotal moment in history in where every piece is falling into their right places, and yes, these times seems dire and dark, but it is in the dire moments in where desperation is required and it is in the darkest moments that the light shines the brightest.

So it’s hard to say if I am to survive this lifetime with my dream intact on my very hands. It’s even harder to say if my country will even survive the current administration and reach its dream, whatever it is. But maybe one day, after this time, after this moment, after this lifetime, we may finally escape the chamber of our dreams, and become something else entirely, something that is primordial or godlike, with no dreams, but a life that has transcended beyond mortal grounds. But for now, we must endure being within, living and sacrificing, to the ever god that never rewards us.