Dare to dream

By Baba Galleh Jallow

Dreaming is for many of us a scary prospect. Not dreaming of the sleeping
sort, which is totally involuntary and therefore easy; but dreaming of the
thinking sort that seeks to find solutions to collective social problems
and bring about collective social success. Many of us of course dream, and
often dream big. But most of our dreams are centered around us and what is
dear to us personally and to our loved ones. We dream of success and we
work hard on achieving success because we believe that we can. And we can.
What matters is what kind of success do we dream of? Is it success for us
only and our loved ones? Or is it success for the greater good of society,
of the nation to which we belong? Most often than not, we tend to dream of
success only for us and our loved ones. Dreaming of collective success for
society is for many of us too intimidating to engage in.

It is a sad fact that most often than not when it comes to dreaming of
success for the collective wellbeing, we balk and stumble and grumble about
the impossibility of the gargantuan task. We balk at the thought of what
momentous challenges we must face and overcome, what slippery mountains we
must climb; what pains we must suffer to get there; and we immediately
banish all dreams of collective success from our minds. We regard the
numerous challenges we face and must overcome and remove from our path to
collective success with mind-crippling trepidation. We fear that tackling
these challenges will take away our secure sense of being. We fear that
overcoming these challenges will obstruct our individual ambitions to
achieve our own personal ambitions. We dread the prospect of change that
will manifest as a space in which our personal status and privileges will
somehow be diminished because they will be subjected to the greater good.
We fear change that will magnify other identities and present other
possibilities at the expense of our own individual identities and personal
preferences. We are so petrified by the possibility of change that we
actually search for more challenges and obstacles everywhere to convince
ourselves that dreaming of collective success is an exercise in futility.
Where we cannot find any real challenges and obstacles to add to the
already large pile of challenges and obstacles we face, we manufacture
imaginary ones to convince ourselves of the futility of dreaming of
collective success, of trying to think outside the box and of doing things
differently.

And because we are opposed to dreaming of collective success in our minds,
we become somehow intolerant of others who dare to dream of collective
success. We loudly grumble that people have unworthy motives for saying
this or trying to do that, regardless of the often obvious merits of what
they are saying or trying to do. We go out of our way to decry other people
for dreaming of collective success and roundly accuse them of being greedy
for status, or power or wealth. We insist that everybody must know their
place and just do things the way things have always been done. We advocate
the spurious advisability of a parochial tunnel vision that ignores
everything not located directly within its path, however narrow, however
diminishing of human potential. We declare visions failed even before they
are fully articulated, almost before any actions are taken for their
actualization. We try to impose an enforced mediocrity on our fellow beings
and never even pause to think how our antics can harm society at large.
Because we are too timid to dream of success for the collectivity, we get
trapped in a never ending cycle of failure and incompetence, of a
frightening incapacity to manage the ever growing pile of obstacles and
challenges stunting and arresting our development as a society. And in our
own small minds and tight spaces, we sheepishly grin and gloat over how we
are going to make sure that they fail: all those so-called dreamers who
think we are fools.

And so we not only banish all dreams of collective success from our minds,
we try to sabotage other people’s dreams of collective success by pointing
to imaginary holes in their minds and imaginary bottlenecks around their
thoughts; we grossly misrepresent their motivations, and we stay wilfully
deaf and blind to their real motivations. We highlight the imaginary wrongs
of going there when they should be staying here. We raise imaginary red
flags against any departures from the ordinary, common ways of doing things
even if those ordinary, common ways never get anything done. We warn of
imaginary traps on the path, imaginary dangers lurking in imaginary
shadows, and imaginary bottomless pits we all would fall into if no one
listens to our imaginary pleas for sanity. We paint innovative thoughts and
actions in the dark grey colors of reckless, selfish mindlessness. And we
self-righteously highlight the common and the mundane as the only
acceptable modes of social thought and action. We prioritize a manufactured
probity over true human potential, and we recklessly utter puerile and
dangerous incoherencies that could derail the very society we purport to
love and defend, and thereby imperil the lives of unborn generations just
to satisfy our bloated egos and our biting urge to deal with someone who
dares to think and act otherwise than we do.

Perhaps without realizing it, we become fastidious dream slappers unmindful
of the fact that a society without dreamers of collective success is a
society doomed to perpetual failure, social stagnation and common chaos.
When a society discourages dreaming of collective success, it loses its
collective mind and engages in all manner of self-defeating trivialities,
behavioral contradictions and soul-demeaning bickering, scheming and
plotting. People in such a society advocate beneficial change but insist
that beneficial change is what they say it is and nothing else. They claim
a monopoly on knowledge of what is best for society not because they know
what is best for society, but because they insist that what is best for
society is what they say it is and nothing else, an opinion which they
habitually mistake for fact. They loudly insist that people who dare to
dream of collective success are just pretenders who have no capacity at all
to even think properly. And they loudly insist that such people must stop
themselves or be forcefully stopped for the greater good of society even as
they sabotage that very greater good by insisting on the infallibility of
their parochial tunnel visions of what is right and proper to the exclusion
of all contrary views and possibilities.

The good news is that those who dare to dream of collective success
naturally remain unfazed in the face of the parochial antics of hostile
dream slappers. They continue to dream of collective success and encourage
others to dream of collective success. They know that by dreaming of
collective success, society manifests its collective emotional intelligence
and generates collective transformative energy. They know that dreaming of
collective success generates a rich and beautiful culture of social
creativity, enhances the national genius, and actualizes national
potential. They know that a society that dreams of collective success is a
society that generates peace and plenty in all the ways that really matter.
They know that dreaming of collective success is the only way to take a
society to the next level. And so they are able to quietly ignore the loud
naysayers and continue to dare to dream and to act on their dreams.

When we dream of collective success we realize that we are much bigger and
better than all the complications that threaten our collective future. We
become convinced and act on the conviction that we are bigger and better
than all the differences that inspire needless anger and hostility in us,
the ephemeral peculiarities that cause us to adopt parochial and
indefensible positions based only on our own personal interests and petty
grievances. We realize that we are bigger and better than the small-minded
non-issues that cause us to spew garbage from minds designed to manifest
excellence and genius. Equally important, we come to know and accept in
fact that dreaming of collective success must be backed by right actions
for the common good to manifest as lived reality. And so yes, we must dare
to dream: we must dare to think the thoughts, talk the talk, and walk the
walk, however challenging, towards the actualization and enjoyment of
collective success for our society. And we can do it.


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