The Dreamcatcher

A small dreamcatcher can cost you less than a hundred bucks. All your nightmares can go away, all your finest dreams can come true. I wish it was all that easy. A hundred bucks. But who am I fooling. It never was easy to reach your dreams or get rid of your nightmares.

For the past two weeks, people would flock into lottery ticket booths to take a shot at luck. I know I did. I mean who wouldn't? A shot at being an instant multimillionaire. ~500million pesos. Imagine all the Jack Daniels I can buy, or the cars I can drive, or the women I can seduce with those (haha). Imagine all the people I can help. Imagine all the time I can spend spending those money. Imagine not having to work everyday.

The probability of winning a lottery is, I've said this before, essentially the same whether I placed a 20-peso bet or not. But why place a bet in the first place? Well, for one 500 million is really tempting. Winning this pot would solve a lot of problems I am having right now or will be having in a not-so-distant future. Basically, I'm insuring my current and future family's future.

But I wasn't lucky enough. As well as the tens of millions of Filipinos who collectively hoped for a better future in a higher income tax bracket. Because that's what we all hope for. An easy way out. Like when we pretend to be sleeping whenever we needed to do some chores. Like when we pay an extra to the licensing officer to get our driver's license faster. Like when we fabricated a cheat sheet on our midterms because we were too lazy to memorize a theorem. Like when we quit.

The thing is, I wish everything was easy. That when I wake up tomorrow I'll feel better and detoxified. That when I wake up tomorrow I'll be rich, powerful and famous. That when I wake up tomorrow I'll be successful. That I'll have everything I want: a posh condo on the upper east side, Leighton Meester lying on my bed, a chauffer driving my bentley, a G6, a yacht, and season (court-side) tickets to the Boston Celtics. 

That's until I was served by a kick: a sudden feeling of falling that makes me wake up from all these.

When we finally wake up, we all want an easy way out. But that's because nothing was ever easy. We are made this way. Fragile. Incomplete. Miserable. Lonely. Because if we had everything, what else is there to live by? What else is there to strive for? What else is there to struggle with? Life is what it is: HARD. And I admit sometimes I don't like it.

Sometimes I just want to have a dreamcatcher. Because it promises to get my finest dreams and get rid of my worst nightmares. But let me tell you this. The only dreamcatcher we are going to have... Is an inspiration. (not inception, sorry) Inspiration. Why? because we don't need a superficial dreamcatcher to reach for our dreams or fight against our worst nightmares. 

In reality, all we need is to be inspired. Take a brighter look at life. Begin living for something. Start rooting for something real. I truly believe that it is hard to get to where we want to be. And all it will exactly take is hard work to get from now to there. What makes it easy for us is to be inspired. Look for an inspiration, like our mothers or fathers, lovers, dogs, Albert Einstein, or Brad Pitt, or whoever, whatever. Be inspired. 

blame her

Look for your own dreamcatcher. It doesn't have to cost you a hundred bucks. (although sometimes it does and more) I am sure it will make reaching for your dreams a lot easier. And it means you've always got what it takes to reach for them. You just need a little pushing from the outside to be convinced that you are what dreams are really made of. Wake up! You hold the only key to your dreams. Nothing is ever easy. But you can make it easy by being inspired. 

I've made some serious assumptions here. One is dreams are always reachable (I've always made this assumption in this blog). And two, if only Leighton Meester would show up on my doorstep already, it would be so easy for me. Now you all know who to blame if I am still not successful in the near future.