“Poetry demands imagination and with
that imagination, we may discover a dream.” I heard Peter O'Toole
say those immortal words when I watched Man of La Mancha
and they've always stuck with me. For those that have never heard of
the musical, read the novel or seen the movie, it's about the author
Miguel De Cervantes when he was imprisoned during the Spanish
Inquisition and he tells the story of Don Quixote in order to keep
the prisoners from burning his work. Don Quixote is a sick, elderly
man that dresses in antique armor and goes on a quest to defeat evil.
I've always loved the story because of how it shows the power that
comes from dreams.
Pursuing
my dream of being an author/writer, it's an extremely difficult task
and it requires a lot of my free time. This is my way of saying that
I don't get out much and when I do go out, I see people always over
doing it. They're making stupid decisions, getting in trouble and
taking risks that can end their life before it really begins. When
asked why they would do something like that, they all have the same
answer for the same question. “I have to live life because it's the
only life that we're going to have.” While I respect this point of
view, I have to humbly disagree.
One of
the greatest gifts humans beings can have is an imagination. These
people live life because it's all they have, I live my life because
of what it can be. In my parents lifetime, they have come from seeing
segregation to an African-American president, Wars, Peace, and
advancements in various fields such as medicines, technologies and
explorations. We've broken barriers, pushed human restrictions to new
limits and expanded our understanding of the universe. Everything
accomplished because people had an imagination and dedicated
themselves to turning it into reality.
I can
only imagine what the future holds for me and I hope one day that my
work will contribute to mankind's progression. In the tale of Don
Quixote, his delusions helped two people by the names of Sancho and
Aldonza see past their realities. It helped them cope with the fact
that Sancho had never really done anything in his life until he
decided to join Don Quixote on his adventure. Aldonza also benefited
because she saw herself as a person in the end, not just some
prostitute meant to be someone's toy every night. That's the power of
the dream.
This
is why I choose to live my life, I want to contribute something that
will help people see things in other ways except reality because
let's face it. Reality really sucks sometimes for a lot of people, if
it didn't then we wouldn't need escapes like bars, books, clubs,
movies, and video games. At the end of the film, Peter O'Toole says
to the prisoners, “God help us all. We are all men of La Mancha.”
I have to say that I consider myself a modern man of La Mancha. I say
that because I'm only self published right now and I may not have an
agent or a publisher, but I'll never give up on the impossible dream.
