Are You the One Your Dream Person Dreams Of?

The description of the person of your dreams is ready, I know; you have been working on it for years. Educated they will be, well traveled, speaking two languages. Running in the mornings, reading books in the evenings, holding their own at the table. A fine dream, I will not fault it. But I will not ask you for the description; I will ask you for your day. What time do you go to bed, what time do you rise? Does your acquaintance with the treadmill go beyond a greeting? How many years back must you go to remember the last book you finished? I do not ask to throw it in your face; I ask so you may see this: the person you describe has a dream too, and in that dream, in all likelihood, stands someone living the life you have described. Well then, is the person in their dream you? I love the silence that follows this question; it is the sound of thinking.

Everyone makes the same mistake while building a dream: they keep themselves out of the equation. A dream is built for one person but lived with two. While you build it you are alone, every detail at your command; when it comes to living it, the other side turns out to have a list too, an eye, a preference. Love is not a one-way liking, it is a two-way acceptance: you choose, true; but you are also chosen. Every dream built without reckoning the being-chosen side is born lame from the start; if it does not walk, one should not be surprised.

Say you have written your expectations, sifted whom you inherited them from; say you have honestly written yourself too; on that paper no one will read. Now put the two papers side by side. The whole matter knots itself into this single question: if the owner of these expectations; that person in your dream; met the you that is here, in a room, would they stay? Are you the person your dream person dreams of?

At first sight the question looks merciless; it is not. It says “you are insufficient” to no one. It only shows the scissors-gap between two papers. A gap is no shame; an unseen gap is; for the unseen gap does not close, it only wears people out. The answer to the question asked for years; “why does no one right come my way?”; is much of the time this unseen gap: perhaps right ones had come your way, but no match had been made. Moreover the question deals evenly with both sides; it sets no one above, no one below. You too are someone’s dream at this moment (of that you can be sure) and whether that someone, on seeing you, would stay, is the question they too must ask themselves. Everyone passes before the same mirror; to some the turn comes early, to some late.

With what, then, is this comparison made? I use three scales, and the order matters. The first is character and morals: is this someone who stands behind the word they give? The second is shared direction: are you looking the same way, do you want the same thing from life? The third is growing: does this person make the one beside them larger, or smaller? First put the one in your dream on these three scales. Most dreams cannot even climb onto the first scale; for dreams are generally built from height, from profession, from a smile; not from morals. A dream without morals is an ornamented danger. Then the real work: put yourself on the same three scales. How solid is your word? Is your direction clear; for the person without a direction cannot enter the dream of one who has a direction; at best they cross their road, they cannot join their journey. And you; do you grow the one beside you? If you want to know, look back: did those who entered your life so far part from your side having grown, or having shrunk?

These scales know no gender; the account is the same for both sides to the last penny. I have also listened, many times, to the description of the dream man. Strong but tender, working hard yet his evenings always left to me, a man everyone respects whose eye nonetheless sees no one but me. The items one by one are lovely; side by side they strain the laws of physics. The question is the same here too: that strong, that full, that sought-after man, coming home in the evening, what kind of life would he wish to find before him? How much of that life have you built? The question is not to make anyone smaller; it is to show that the dream has one more side. What you call a dream is not a wish; a wish is spoken and awaited, a dream is met.

If the gap has shown itself (and in most of us who look honestly, it does) the turn comes to the road map. In its order, without skipping a step.

First, try changing your own reality. This is not that familiar “improve yourself” sermon; it is a targeted repair. What is missing, that you might stand in the life of the person of your dreams; is it truly the language, or is it listening? Is it sport, or is it order? A person always ascribes showy deficits to themselves; the real deficit is most often the quiet one. Diagnose it rightly, and work at that.

If it does not come, move on to the second step. Change the expectation. This is not shrinking your dream; it is bringing it home; turning a dream that has no counterpart in your life into a dream that could have one. An expectation harvested from the screen was not yours to begin with; by its going you lose nothing. What you suppose you lose is not a dream but a habit. Know this too: to change an expectation is another thing than to renounce it. The renouncer sulks; the changer corrects. The item “let him be someone who travels much” can become “let him be someone whose curiosity is alive”; the first wants a passport, the second an eye. Compare the worth of the two in your own life; which would truly have made you happy? Scratch most expectations a little and from underneath comes a plainer, more real need; the shell is the screen’s, the core is yours. Leave the shell, take the core.

The third step is a quieter question, asked with no one listening: do I want this so much? Do I want there to be someone merely so that there is a relationship? The people who can truly answer “yes, merely so there is one” are few. Most people are eased by the question itself; for most of the time what is wanted is not that person but the sentence “I am not alone”; and for that sentence one does not lease out a lifetime.

And the fourth step; yes, I will say that too, for those who do not say it have told half of this road: if none of it comes, format yourself for solitude. Does it sound frightening? It is not. There are two kinds of solitude, and the two are not even kin. One is the solitude of unasked questions: unlooked, unattempted, full of “what ifs”; the one that gnaws a person is that. The other is open-eyed solitude: the solitude of a person who has looked, asked, worked, seen. In it there is no “what if”; in its place sits peace. Let me add this too; observation, not consolation: of those who climb this ladder honestly, very few remain to the fourth step. Most see their business done on the first or the second. For the real obstacle, most of the time, was not impossibility; it was never having looked.

The old ones have a beautiful word for harmony: imtizaç. The ability of two separate things to mingle without spoiling one another. A word that tells the good state of love better is hard to find: to mingle without dissolving, to be able to become “us” while remaining “you.” But imtizaç is two-sided; the two things that would mingle must each first know itself. What does not know itself does not mingle; it smears. To dream is everyone’s right; I am only reminding that at the other end of the dream there is also a person, and that person also has a looking eye. That eye is no fairy-tale eye; it is as choosy as your eye, as worldly as your eye.

One day you will land in the same crowded room as the person of your dreams; life loves doing that. You will know them at first sight, that much is certain; you have been making their description for years. But will they, within the crowd, notice you? If they will not, begin the work not by blaming the dream but by preparing yourself for that room. And my shortest question I keep for the end: if your dream saw you, would it recognize you?