If our dreams die life is a broken-winged bird

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Langston Hughes was an American poet, playwright, novelist. He was involved in supporting the poor and downtrodden.

He was born in Joplin Missouri 1901 and died 1967.

I never heard of him until last week when I came across him while talking to a group of young people who have recently come to Ireland. They have good English and interested in poetry.

Langston’s poem 'Dreams’ is short  and simple:  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.

There is a lot of talk in the public place these days     about the age of retirement. I suppose it is all  caught up with economics and how much the State can get out of us before they have to start paying out our pensions, which we have in fact paid into.

Retirement from what? It might be that our day job is part of our dream but for many it’s simply the means of earning money to live.

You hear people in their mid-to-late 50s saying with delight in their eyes they only have another X number of years and ‘I’m out of here’.

But, to do what?

We all need to keep that dream alive in us. Hughes is spot on when he says the day we no longer have a dream is the day we are like a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

It’s awful to see a bird not being able to fly. It is a far bigger tragedy when our dreams have been extinguished. Hope over despair, always.

The older we get the more vulnerable we are to all sorts of injuries, ailments and ‘the blows and arrows of outrageous fortune’ that come our way. That’s life and so often there is little we can do about it.

But there is an insane ‘law’ out there telling us that we have to act our age and that at a certain age it’s time for the scrap yard. There is no human scrap yard.

One of the great qualities of a good teacher is to inspire her or his pupils to dream big, to believe in themselves, to realise that they can do it.

Yes, part of teaching is passing on information but an essential ingredient to the job is filling young people with ideas and hopes; giving them belief in themselves so that they can chase their dreams.

How often do we hear at half time the words of inspiration a manager speaks to the team. The team is goaded on to live the dream and win.

Why should we ever stop dreaming? It is profoundly sad to see people no longer living in hope and looking forward for new goals to achieve. 

No matter what the dream is, no matter how silly it may seem to others, the dream is the fire in our soul and we must make it our life’s ambition to hold on to it until that day when the curtain falls on our lives. We all have so much to give. And age should have nothing to do with it.

‘Hold fast to the dreams.’