Monday, July 25, 2005

The Doers, the Dreamers, and Me...


One of my favorite movies is the original, "Muppet Movie". No, not the highly lame, "Muppets in Space" or "Muppet Treasure Island" - uh, definitely not. We're talking where it all started. The movie begins with a wide angle pan shot of the Florida Everglades. We gradually focus in on a log with a frog, or a frog with a log, whichever you prefer. My favorite childhood green buddy, Kermit busts into "The Rainbow Connection". The final line being, "The lovers, the dreamers and me." Kermit has a dream - to go to California and make a movie. The tension throughout the rest of the show is between how some characters believe in this dream and that others don't.

I think we all live in this tension. Each of us has "dreams" we would like to fulfill and each of us has stuff that we simply need to "do". The problem is that I often find myself dreaming and then feeling guilty that I haven't gotten things DONE. Or I find myself in this frantic state of doing, so much that my soul starts to wither because it hasn't DREAMED in days. Rarely, if ever am I in a state of balance. So I guess I'm either a frustrated dreamer or an exhausted doer. I think I'd rather be the former and dream with a little guilt. It is here that I find fulfillment, even if just for a time. Even if the dream never really results in anything tangible. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "Better to have dreamed in vain, than never to have dreamed at all."

"The Muppet Movie" ends with Kermit and the gang finally getting the chance to make a movie and yet somehow Animal destroys the entire set. Even through this seemingly disastrous ending Kermit still holds onto "The Rainbow Connection" - the dream. Something about human... err... frog souls - we've gotta keep dreaming the dream.

1 comment:

Kristin Baker said...

"So I guess I'm either a frustrated dreamer or an exhausted doer." Wow! As my husband says to make me laugh "True dat!"
Can I add that to my quote journal? Here are some others along these lines. Great minds think alike:
"Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground." Theodore Roosevelt
"You see things and you say 'Why?' but I dream things and say 'Why not?'" George Bernard Shaw
"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." Oscar Wilde
"Lift up your eyes upon this day breaking for you. Give birth again to the dream." Maya Angelou
"If you don't daydream and kind of plan things out in your imagination, you never get there. So you have to start someplace." Robert Duvall

Happy dreaming! It ain't easy bein' green . . .