Hold fast to dreams
My title is from a poem by the poet, Langston Hughes, entitled, Dreams.
Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life is a broken-winged bird
that cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
for when dreams go
life is a barren field
frozen with snow.
It is among my favorite poems, one of the few I know by heart, because I feel its universal truth. Dreams don't have to be grandiose, merely something that gives us purpose, a reason to get up in the morning. Otherwise, why bother?
Published in 1923, I suspect Dr. King had read it and was a firm believer in its message for he was beyond a doubt a purveyor of dreams, dreams much bigger than an individual life.
If you have never done so, or even if you have, I would encourage a reading of the entire speech - or listening to it. The "I have a dream" passage is towards the end and while moving, it is only a small part of what he said that day in 1963. So much has changed since then, and yet many of the images he paints of the country he loved are still in evidence today. The history he describes is no less true. His counsel, "Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred" should be held aloft and remembered as much as, "I have a dream."
Despite their fame, the words he said that day are not the first ones that come to my mind when someone asks me my favorite Martin Luther King,Jr. quote. In November, 1957, in a sermon he gave in Alabama, he said,
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
My second favorite is from a sermon he gave in November, 1956: "Let no man pull you low enough to hate him." This comes from a longer paragraph that I had not read before I began to write this essay, but which I find to be perfect insofar as it reflects both history and our present as well as portending the future. A rather bleak one, sadly. He said:
As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
The tentacles of chaos are visible across the world for humans seem incapable of conspicuous acts of kindness as a route to peace.
Even so, I hold fast to dreams, and make every effort to be love and light to all whose paths I cross. I may not change the world, but I can emulate the change I want to see.