“All men dream: but not equally.  Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

— T.E. Lawrence

This morning was a rare one.  Each night, I set an alarm for 5:30 AM.  Most mornings, I awaken to see 5:00 on my clock and turn off the alarm before it ever sounds.  It’s a great thing to be a morning person and be ready to leave my bed behind when the day demands my attention.  Today was one of those that comes along once a year or less.  Today it was the insistent beeping of the alarm that awoke me.  I wanted to turn over and go back to sleep, not because I was still tired, but because I felt the need to finish a dream.

Unfinished dreams can send me into the day feeling half-baked, as though I am forgetting something important.  I shook off the feeling of wanting to linger and forged ahead toward the morning.  Now I have no idea what that unfinished dream was about.  Maybe I will find myself back in its familiarity tonight.  Sometimes my dreams offer chances to work on problems that challenge me during my waking life.  Sometimes, without even remembering that I have dreamed, I awaken with a solution that escaped me in the daylight.

Lawrence calls our dreams vanity.  I think they may be connected to the dangerous dreaming that we pursue when awake.  Perhaps the dreams of our sleep state are dress rehearsals for the sort of dreaming we dare to do when awake.  Lawrence calls daytime dreams “dangerous;” because, unlike the innocuous dreams of night, they have the ability to impact the world we live in.  I prefer “powerful” to dangerous, because I think we have the ability to add intention to our dreams and use them to change our reality.

Pay attention to your dreams — the ones you visit when you sleep.  Look carefully at them and ask yourself whether they take you to places worth going, places you don’t visit when you are awake.  Ask yourself whether your dreams should become a part of your waking life.  When we add intention to the dreams we hold, we have the power to bring change to our world.  Some might call this dangerous, but I call it transformational.  Dream dangerously!