The unidentifiable beauty of broken dreams

Broken dreams, everybody knows how it feels, well, except maybe Donald Trump, but most if us hope he'll encounter his first serious one soon. The problem with appropriated dreams is that if they don't include positive thoughts for others, they rarely come true. The most important condition however is knowing how to dream. Without the aptitude of opening your mind for some irrational and, at first glance, crazy ideas, your brain won't communicate with your heart. I've had hundreds, maybe even a thousand of unrealistic spins on the future and, although realizing that all these fancy castles in the milky-way of pleasant thoughts won't come true, I keep believing in the importance of unrestricted imagination. It only needs a distilled drop of positivism to fall on one of these overheated desires to germinate a little seed that could grow into the, blue sky reaching, tree you could climb in. The more trees, the more opportunities. One day you'll find that tree that's capable of carrying your treehouse.

Sometimes naivety turns out the be the best quality with which someone can be equipped. Enthusiastic people just follow their dream, not worrying about the consequences or problems that will block the way while fulfilling their dream. Central Portugal seems to have a big attraction to the kind of people who want to break with the rat-race world they're caught up in. A piece of land, off-grid, biological agriculture, sustainable housing, in short, a little private paradise. The ones that were aware of the huge effort it takes on a daily bases to maintain that ecological dream, seem to do pretty well surrounded by the beautiful vicinity in the heart of this country. Surprisingly enough, some of those who came unprepared are also successfully chasing their goals, ignoring all the mountains of yet to overcome problems, smiling away all negativity and “no can do” remarks from the outside world. Facebook communities are among these horrible “outside world” places to ask for any advise when it comes to living in Portugal. Every immigration story is different, not in the least because of reasons, background and just good old plain luck during the first actions. Oh yes we, the ones living in a “conventional” house, all had to overcome some aggravation on certain rules and regulations that seem strange through the eyes of a more or less DIW expert. Some were used to just call a company and had things done accordingly to standards, others spend their Saturday mornings in between the shelves of a local supplier figuring how to do it themselves. Standards are different, Europe isn't a big system of regulated building rules and quality is subjective to cultural excepted livability. Still, it beats living in a town where you can't paint your front door red, just because all neighbours like green.

Broken dreams are often the reason for taking a few steps forward. It all depends on the flexibility of ones mind and in many cases these shattered views, through that keyhole of the future, are a healthy guide to become grounded in reality and dig deep into ones needs and into the possibilities that are available to lay down a foundation on which upcoming air born ideas could be build. Times are changing, more rapidly now than ever. The chances you get could be different while the dreams you pursuit are still the same. That's where new dreams come in to the nightly restlessness and new ideas come to be reachable landmarks by the time you wake up. There's nothing more to it than just starting that adventure. No, there are no guaranties, there's not a written almanac, not even a Google map to follow. It means walking up a steep hill, reading between the lines and bending the borders a bit to your convenience. When we came to this beautiful country we just did. We just followed the dream and excepted all the walls and barriers that came with it. Lots of mistakes were undone afterwards, lots of wrong words taken for truthful advises, lots of bureaucratic paperwork done at the time they came to our attention. It didn't break the dream, it made the way to our goal progress in a steady pass and it didn't turn our little paradise into a land of broken dreams.

Yes I admit, we payed some fines. We didn't have a drawing of our house, except for the one some clerk made and stamped as excepted, in a few minutes at the local Camara office, after a small donation, which turned out to be incorrect after a new clerk came to the scene a few years later. We made the drawing of the “real situation” ourselves and the fine was a fraction of what an architect would have cost. Not every nightmare is real if you see it from a daylight point of view. Now does the fact that not all is going as smoothly and straightforward as the dream predicted, really matter? I guess not, I even think to know that there's a reason for all the learning moments that cross your path while chasing the future plans you dreamed about. It's all about recognizing the achievements you made, filtering out the accessible parts of the whole fancy world you imagined to be your future. That's what dreaming is all about, it gives you the ability to go beyond borders, leave out all the negatives that reality brings along and build your ideal paradise. The fact that only a small percentage of all these illusive thoughts will see the light, doesn't mean your living in a broken dream, contrariwise, without them you wouldn't know what your goals in live are. Embrace the broken dreams, the have a unidentifiable beauty in them.